insert snazzy blog name here

Don’t work. Avoid telling the truth. Be hated. Love someone.

2010-02-13T20:14:00.003+08:00

Written by Adrian Tan, author of The Teenage Textbook (1988), was the guest-of-honour at a recent NTU convocation ceremony. This was his speech to the graduating class of 2008.
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I must say thank you to the faculty and staff of the Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information for inviting me to give your convocation address. It’s a wonderful honour and a privilege for me to speak here for ten minutes without fear of contradiction, defamation or retaliation. I say this as a Singaporean and more so as a husband.

My wife is a wonderful person and perfect in every way except one. She is the editor of a magazine. She corrects people for a living. She has honed her expert skills over a quarter of a century, mostly by practising at home during conversations between her and me.

On the other hand, I am a litigator. Essentially, I spend my day telling people how wrong they are. I make my living being
disagreeable.

Nevertheless, there is perfect harmony in our matrimonial home. That is because when an editor and a litigator have an argument, the one who triumphs is always the wife.

And so I want to start by giving one piece of advice to the men: when you’ve already won her heart, you don’t need to win every argument.

Marriage is considered one milestone of life. Some of you may already be married. Some of you may never be married. Some of you will be married. Some of you will enjoy the experience so much, you will be married many, many times. Good for you.

The next big milestone in your life is today: your graduation. The end of education. You’re done learning.

You’ve probably been told the big lie that “Learning is a lifelong process” and that therefore you will continue studying and taking masters’ degrees and doctorates and professorships and so on. You know the sort of people who tell you that? Teachers. Don’t you think there is some measure of conflict of interest? They are in the business of learning, after all. Where would they be without you? They need you to be repeat customers.

The good news is that they’re wrong.

The bad news is that you don’t need further education because your entire life is over. It is gone. That may come as a shock to some of you. You’re in your teens or early twenties. People may tell you that you will live to be 70, 80, 90 years old. That is your life expectancy.

I love that term: life expectancy. We all understand the term to mean the average life span of a group of people. But I’m here to talk about a bigger idea, which is what you expect from your life.

You may be very happy to know that Singapore is currently ranked as the country with the third highest life expectancy. We are behind Andorra and Japan, and tied with San Marino. It seems quite clear why people in those countries, and ours, live so long. We share one thing in common: our football teams are all hopeless. There’s very little danger of any of our citizens having their pulses raised by watching us play in the World Cup. Spectators are more likely to be lulled into a gentle and restful nap.

Singaporeans have a life expectancy of 81.8 years. Singapore men live to an average of 79.21 years, while Singapore women live more than five years longer, probably to take into account the additional time they need to spend in the bathroom.

So here you are, in your twenties, thinking that you’ll have another 40 years to go. Four decades in which to live long and prosper.

Bad news. Read the papers. There are people dropping dead when they’re 50, 40, 30 years old. Or quite possibly just after finishing their convocation. They would be very disappointed that they didn’t meet their life expectancy.

I’m here to tell you this. Forget about your life expectancy.

After all, it’s calculated based on an average. And you never, ever want to expect being average.

Revisit those expectations. You might be looking forward to working, falling in love, marrying, raising a family. You are told that, as graduates, you should expect to find a job paying so much, where your hours are so much, where your responsibilities are so much.

That is what is expected of you. And if you live up to it, it will be an awful waste.

If you expect that, you will be limiting yourself. You will be living your life according to boundaries set by average people. I have nothing against average people. But no one should aspire to be them. And you don’t need years of education by the best minds in Singapore to prepare you to be average.

What you should prepare for is mess. Life’s a mess. You are not entitled to expect anything from it. Life is not fair. Everything does not balance out in the end. Life happens, and you have no control over it. Good and bad things happen to you day by day, hour by hour, moment by moment. Your degree is a poor armour against fate.

Don’t expect anything. Erase all life expectancies. Just live. Your life is over as of today. At this point in time, you have grown as tall as you will ever be, you are physically the fittest you will ever be in your entire life and you are probably looking the best that you will ever look. This is as good as it gets. It is all downhill from here. Or up. No one knows.

What does this mean for you? It is good that your life is over.

Since your life is over, you are free. Let me tell you the many wonderful things that you can do when you are free.

The most important is this: do not work.

Work is anything that you are compelled to do. By its very nature, it is undesirable.

Work kills. The Japanese have a term “Karoshi”, which means death from overwork. That’s the most dramatic form of how work can kill. But it can also kill you in more subtle ways. If you work, then day by day, bit by bit, your soul is chipped away, disintegrating until there’s nothing left. A rock has been ground into sand and dust.

There’s a common misconception that work is necessary. You will meet people working at miserable jobs. They tell you they are “making a living”. No, they’re not. They’re dying, frittering away their fast-extinguishing lives doing things which are, at best, meaningless and, at worst, harmful.

People will tell you that work ennobles you, that work lends you a certain dignity. Work makes you free. The slogan “Arbeit macht frei” was placed at the entrances to a number of Nazi concentration camps. Utter nonsense.

Do not waste the vast majority of your life doing something you hate so that you can spend the small remainder sliver of your life in modest comfort. You may never reach that end anyway.

Resist the temptation to get a job. Instead, play. Find something you enjoy doing. Do it. Over and over again. You will become good at it for two reasons: you like it, and you do it often. Soon, that will have value in itself.

I like arguing, and I love language. So, I became a litigator. I enjoy it and I would do it for free. If I didn’t do that, I would’ve been in some other type of work that still involved writing fiction – probably a sports journalist.

So what should you do? You will find your own niche. I don’t imagine you will need to look very hard. By this time in your life, you will have a very good idea of what you will want to do. In fact, I’ll go further and say the ideal situation would be that you will not be able to stop yourself pursuing your passions. By this time you should know what your obsessions are. If you enjoy showing off your knowledge and feeling superior, you might become a teacher.

Find that pursuit that will energise you, consume you, become an obsession. Each day, you must rise with a restless enthusiasm. If you don’t, you are working.

Most of you will end up in activities which involve communication. To those of you I have a second message: be wary of the truth. I’m not asking you to speak it, or write it, for there are times when it is dangerous or impossible to do those things. The truth has a great capacity to offend and injure, and you will find that the closer you are to someone, the more care you must take to disguise or even conceal the truth. Often, there is great virtue in being evasive, or equivocating. There is also great skill. Any child can blurt out the truth, without thought to the consequences. It takes great maturity to appreciate the value of silence.

In order to be wary of the truth, you must first know it. That requires great frankness to yourself. Never fool the person in the
mirror.

I have told you that your life is over, that you should not work, and that you should avoid telling the truth. I now say this to you: be hated.

It’s not as easy as it sounds. Do you know anyone who hates you? Yet every great figure who has contributed to the human race has been hated, not just by one person, but often by a great many. That hatred is so strong it has caused those great figures to be shunned, abused, murdered and in one famous instance, nailed to a cross.

One does not have to be evil to be hated. In fact, it’s often the case that one is hated precisely because one is trying to do right by one’s own convictions. It is far too easy to be liked, one merely has to be accommodating and hold no strong convictions. Then one will gravitate towards the centre and settle into the average. That cannot be your role. There are a great many bad people in the world, and if you are not offending them, you must be bad yourself. Popularity is a sure sign that you are doing something wrong.

The other side of the coin is this: fall in love.

I didn’t say “be loved”. That requires too much compromise. If one changes one’s looks, personality and values, one can be loved by anyone.

Rather, I exhort you to love another human being. It may seem odd for me to tell you this. You may expect it to happen naturally, without deliberation. That is false. Modern society is anti-love. We’ve taken a microscope to everyone to bring out their flaws and shortcomings. It far easier to find a reason not to love someone, than otherwise. Rejection requires only one reason. Love requires complete acceptance. It is hard work – the only kind of work that I find palatable.

Loving someone has great benefits. There is admiration, learning, attraction and something which, for the want of a better word, we call happiness. In loving someone, we become inspired to better ourselves in every way. We learn the truth worthlessness of material things. We celebrate being human. Loving is good for the soul.

Loving someone is therefore very important, and it is also important to choose the right person. Despite popular culture, love doesn’t happen by chance, at first sight, across a crowded dance floor. It grows slowly, sinking roots first before branching and blossoming. It is not a silly weed, but a mighty tree that weathers every storm. You will find, that when you have someone to love, that the face is less important than the brain, and the body is less important than the heart.

You will also find that it is no great tragedy if your love is not reciprocated. You are not doing it to be loved back. Its value is to
inspire you.

Finally, you will find that there is no half-measure when it comes to loving someone. You either don’t, or you do with every cell in your body, completely and utterly, without reservation or apology. It consumes you, and you are reborn, all the better for it.

Don’t work. Avoid telling the truth. Be hated. Love someone.

Courtesy calls

2010-02-12T15:29:00.000+08:00

Courtesy... It never really occurred to me till very recently, that courtesy matters to me ... A lot ...

Just recently, I've been bring m&m chocs to class to snack on and well, share with my classmates... Almost all of them were thankful for them and those who asked if I had brought m&ms again were courteous and asked nicely... Well, all but one.. And it really peeved me.. The way he demanded for them rather than requested ...

It seems like it's more the process of asking, than the meaning... Probably cos of how shallow demanding, as if it were your god-given right makes one look extremely shallow...

On another note, I was pleasently urprises this morning as I was driving to school ... A red car signalled early and took his time to edge into my lane, and when I gave way to him, he waved 'thanks', the same way the courteous driving ads on tv show... On the other hand, had he not signalled and simply cut in and not wave, the experence would have been very different...

I suppose, I've been guilty of being rude many times when I was younger... But I guess this is growing up? Or perhaps advanced aging! =X

Thinking back to my times in secondary school... I wonder ... Had anyone raise up my apparent rudeness... Would I have taken note and made changes? Is it fair to fault someone over something he/she doesn't notice? What is 'fair' anyway? After all, someone once said... All is fair in love and war... Well... Besides love and war, is there anything else? God and religion I guess...

2010-02-06T20:11:00.003+08:00

alright ... i'm trying to blog now ... but the thoughts aren't really flowing ...

anyway i taught the youth class on the fruit of the spirit - kindness ... also brought brownie for the lunch table at church ... it promptly ran out ...

iris wasn't feeling well, so her mom took food for her while oliver, sophraine and i queued for food ... we didn't have lunch at our usual spot near the front of the church either, but had lunch farther back, under the trees ... so we didn't really talk much .. she looked really really worn out this week though ... anyway, she left really early to go home and rest ...

that aside ... this is a really cute pic of two kids in church ...

so cute right? heh ...

well, thats about it for now ... like i said .. the thoughts aren't flowing =(

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20:25:00, 6/2/2010

5th Feb... 17 days till practicum, 14 days till assignment deadlines, 9 days to CNY/V-day

2010-02-05T22:32:00.002+08:00

The things we do in class at NIE ...

yup, thats what we did in tutorial today ...

Yoghurt Icecream with kiwi, rock melon & strawberry .. =) yummy ... there was some remnant blueberries, choc chips & oreo cookies from the prev. order though =/

and, yes... this is starting to look very familiar ... walnut double choc brownie ... this batch is for lunch at maranatha tomorrow ... i'm seriously considering moving to AskGod indefinitely though ... so this may be the last thing i make for lunch at maranatha for a loooooong time ...

too bad about the brownie though ... the tudor gold cocoa powder isn't as nice as hershey's cocoa ... so ... i need to find some recipe to use up the not-so-nice cocoa powder so i can buy nicer hershey's cocoa ... =X

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22:42:38, 5/2/2010

A classroom divided ...

2010-02-04T19:58:00.003+08:00

Does the color of your eyes matter? does the color of your skin matter? This is an excellent video on discrimination ... it's a must-watch for educators! and it's really good for anyone else as well =) although it is a little long .. at 55mins ... but take it as an hour-long TV show ... most of us have no problem sitting in front of the TV or in the movie theatre for hours ... so yeah, 55mins isn't really long for this much content =)

3rd Feb

2010-02-03T23:31:00.004+08:00

Green & Pink ... Matcha & some fruity/strawberry flavor that was really good =) was tempted to go for Green & Yellow ... which would be Matcha & D24 durian ... but i think that's just too weird =X

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alright, other than waking up to a nuisance caller ... who is still trying to call ... even though i've blacklisted his number ...

today was really ... really busy ... lets see ...

7.00am - wake up
8.30am - leave home
9.10am - arrive at NTU macdonalds for breakfast
10.30am - practicum briefing
11.30am - DCE201 grp work (didn't have time for lunch!)
1.30pm - DCM201 class & micro teaching (yes, it was my turn to present... i think it went quite smoothly ...)
3.30pm - DCS201 class
5.30pm - dying of hunger ... and the only food available in NIE at 5.30pm is yoghurt icecream or gelateria icecream ... so thats what i had ... ... (yes, it's the pic u saw at the top of this post ...)
5.45pm - ran through heavy rain to get to my car ...
6.20pm - arrived at home
6.25pm - shower (cos i got caught in the rain)
7.XXpm - dinner
7.45pm - sleeeeeep
9.38pm - wake up to nuisance call
11:41pm - have already blocked the nuisance call number, but the person is still calling -_-

i shall go to sleep now ...

23:42:38, 3/2/2010

what the- ?

2010-02-03T21:47:00.002+08:00

i woke up to a wrong number call from a gangster? a relatively traditional chinese gangster who kept repeating the same phrase of vulgarities .. *sigh* ... at least it's stopped ...

well, the phone number that the feller was calling from is 62975146 ..

anyway, i just installed iBlacklist and put that number in as a 'blacklisted' number =) lets hope the app does it's magic ... i really should hire an ah-beng to help me respond to such calls though ... or set divert the call to IMH? or SG casket?

currently ...

2010-02-03T00:09:00.001+08:00

reading "Man's Search for Meaning" by Viktor E. Frankl

on another note ... i'm considering moving over to help with the AskGod group on a long-term permanent kind of basis ...

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He who has a 'Why' to live can bear almost any 'How' - Looking for the 'Why' ...

What Faith Can Do - Kutless

2010-02-01T22:57:00.001+08:00

My current favourite song ... it'll probably stay with my all-time favourites ... =)

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Everybody falls sometimes
Gotta find the strength to rise
From the ashes and make a new beginning
Anyone can feel the ache
You think its more than you can take
But you are stronger, stronger than you know
Don't you give up now
The sun will soon be shining
You gotta face the clouds
To find the silver lining

I've seen dreams that move the mountains
Hope that doesn't ever end
Even when the sky is falling
And I've seen miracles just happen
Silent prayers get answered
Broken hearts become brand new
That's what faith can do

It doesn't matter what you've heard
Impossible is not a word
It's just a reason for someone not to try
Everybody's scared to death
When they decide to take that step
Out on the water
It'll be alright
Life is so much more
Than what your eyes are seeing
You will find your way
If you keep believing

I've seen dreams that move the mountains
Hope that doesn't ever end
Even when the sky is falling
And I've seen miracles just happen
Silent prayers get answered
Broken hearts become brand new
That's what faith can do

Overcome the odds
You do have a chance
(That's what faith can do)
When the world says you can't
It'll tell you that you can!

I've seen dreams that move the mountains
Hope that doesn't ever end
Even when the sky is falling
And I've seen miracles just happen
Silent prayers get answered
Broken hearts become brand new
That's what faith can do
That's what faith can do!
Even if you fall sometimes
You will have the strength to rise

feeling ... blue =(

2010-02-01T18:46:00.001+08:00

*sigh* ... oh well ... life goes on ...

dang ... thanks ah... Amanda ...

2010-01-31T22:33:00.003+08:00

well ... a picture only tells a thousand words ... so i figure this is incomplete ... heh

i know i'm the only vegetarian there .... but that is so --"

2010-01-30T16:55:00.003+08:00

sigh ... why did murphy have to come up with his law? ...

we should have known huh? ..

i spent 6-8 hrs making 100+ mini belgian waffles ...

iris brought crushed almond, a mixture of corn flakes (frosted, honey glazed & original) and chocolate sauce ...

oliver & sophraine ordered 2 5kg tubs of icecream ...

everything was ready and we were all looking forward to it ...

i proceeded to the kitchen to heat the waffles in the oven right after the sermon ended, before the service ended ...

then ... came the call ... the icecream delivery vehicle was involved in an accident and our icecream was melting ... somewhere on some expressway ...

goodbye icecream waffles ... T.T .... wanted to drive out to buy icecream from somewhere else ... but ... sigh ... by the time i managed to get the cars moved, so i can drive out ... well ... lunch would be over ... so we had to contend with waffles ... with toppings =( no icecream ..

depressing ... so depressing that i didn't even take any pics of the heap of waffles ...

thanks for bringing the toppings and cheering me up though ... i think it'd have been quite different if u weren't there iris =/ i wonder what church would feel like when u've gone overseas for your masters/phd in music ... we'll miss you ...

repost of the entry from 1st feb 2008

2010-01-29T17:40:00.000+08:00

I was just looking through my old posts ... and found this ... it's strangely accurate .. as i said before ...

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yup, it's been a long time ... some people probably don't expect this blog to be updated ... .hahah ... but here it is anyway! =)

about a week back? i did this TTI Success Insights, Personal Interests, Attitudes and Values test ... the results were interesting and enlightening. I figure i probably wouldn't have noticed them unless i spent a couple of hours on objective reflection, if not for the test ...

well, after the results were out, i did a short reflection on the test results ... and i figure i'm a unique case ... haha ... perhaps a nut-case =X

so here are the results for ...

Jeremy Tan
Classroom Teacher

YOUR ATTITUDES RANKING
1st - SOCIAL - Strong
2nd - INDIVIDUALISTIC - Strong
3rd - TRADITIONAL - Situational
4th - THEORETICAL - Situational
5th - UTILITARIAN - Indifferent
6th - AESTHETIC - Indifferent

Notice something unique yet? ... Both social and individualistic took ranks 1 and 2 ... and they're contrasting traits ...

Social - Strong
Those who score very high in this value have an inherent love of people. The social person prizes other people and is, therefore, kind, sympathetic and unselfish. They are likely to find the Theoretical, Utilitarian and Aesthetic attitudes cold and inhuman. Compared to the Individualistic value, the Social person regards helping
others as the only suitable form for human relationships. Research into this value indicates that in its purest form, the Social interest is selfless.

Individualistic - Strong
The primary interest for this value is POWER, not necessarily politics. Research studies indicate that leaders in most fields have a high power value. Since competition and struggle play a large part in all areas of life, many
philosophers have seen power as the most universal and most fundamental of motives. There are, however, certain personalities in whom the desire for direct expression of this motive is uppermost; who wish, above all, for personal power, influence and renown.
-Jeremy likes to be in situations that allow him the freedom to control his destiny and the destiny of others. His team's strategy is to attempt to dilute outsiders' influence on the results of their goals.
(haha ... somehow, it's kinda true =X)

oh wells ... what can i say? .. haha ... anyways another thing that is enlightening ... is how God knows us so much better than we know ourselves ...

TRADITIONAL - Situational
The highest interest for this value may be called "unity," "order," or "tradition." Individuals with high scores in this value seek a system for living. This system can be found in such things as conservatism or any authority that has defined rules, regulations and principles for living.
- He will have strong beliefs within a system that he feels most comfortable with.
- Jeremy lets his conscience be his guide.

THEORETICAL - Situational
The primary drive with this value is the discovery of TRUTH. In pursuit of this value, an individual takes a "cognitive" attitude. Such an individual is nonjudgmental regarding the beauty or utility of objects and seeks only
to observe and to reason. Since the interests of the theoretical person are empirical, critical and rational, the person appears to be an intellectual. The chief aim in life is to order and systematize knowledge: knowledge for the sake of knowledge.
- If Jeremy is truly interested in a specific subject, or if knowledge of specific subject matter is required for success, then he will take the initiative to learn about that subject in great depth. (this is so true)
- Jeremy has the potential to become an expert in his chosen field. (alright! expert! XD)

UTILITARIAN - indifferent
The Utilitarian score shows a characteristic interest in money and what is useful. This means that an individual wants to have the security that money brings not only for themselves, but for their present and future family. This value includes the practical affairs of the business world - the production, marketing and consumption of goods, the use of credit, and the accumulation of tangible wealth. This type of individual is thoroughly practical and conforms well to the stereotype of the average American business person. A person with a high score is likely to have a high need to surpass others in wealth.
- Overemphasizing the value of money will bore Jeremy and turn him off. (so true)

AESTHETIC - Indifferent
A higher Aesthetic score indicates a relative interest in "form and harmony." Each experience is judged from the standpoint of grace, symmetry or fitness. Life may be regarded as a procession of events, and each is enjoyed for its own sake. A high score here does not necessarily mean that the incumbent has talents in creative artistry. It indicates a primary interest in the artistic episodes of life.
- Intellectually, Jeremy can see the need for beauty, but has difficulty buying the finer things in life.
- The utility of "something" is more important than its beauty, form and harmony.

go figure ... lolx ... explains a lot to me .. =)

Lastly ...

Areas in which you have strong feelings or passions compared to others:
You have a strong desire to lead, direct and control your own destiny and the destiny of others. You have a desire to lead and are striving for opportunities to advance your position and influence. Others may believe you are jockeying for position and continually stepping "over the line." They may believe that you form relationships only to "move ahead" and gain an advantage.

Areas where others' strong feelings may frustrate you as you do not share their same passion:
Understanding people who view the world based on return on investment will frustrate you. Other things are more important to you. People who emphasize the need for beauty, form and harmony in all aspects of their life may frustrate you. You have other priorities.

The Four (yes four, as in the number 4) kinds of love ...

2010-01-29T17:26:00.002+08:00

A while back ... i posted about the three (3) kinds of love, and my brother corrected me ... so here are the four (4) kinds of love ... article from - http://www.suite101.com/blog/briantubbs/the_four_kinds_of_love

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The four kinds of love are Storge (Stor-gay), Eros, Agape, and Philia. And here's what they mean?

Storge refers to familial love. It is evident, for example, in the warm affection that parents have toward their children. If you're a parent, you know what I'm talking about when you rock your little child to sleep at night. I remember one particular incident when my daughter Jennifer was just a baby, and I was a brand new daddy. (Jennifer was our first). She was having a tough time sleeping, and I was tired. I wanted her to sleep, so I was rocking her -- trying to get her to sleep. She wouldn't. She wasn't tired. Well, after awhile, I was dozing, but she wasn't. I finally woke up enough to focus - and there she was, her big eyes just inches from mine, staring into me. I could almost hear her say: "Don't sleep, Daddy. Look at me instead." I laughed hysterically and held her tightly. I oozed love and affection. This of course is just one memory of many, but it is a perfect example of storge love. A deep and abiding affection.

Eros is the desire to draw out all that is good, beautiful and true. It is motivated by need. It's often understood to refer primarily to sex, but that's really only one part of it - albeit a significant part. Eros involves the emotional need to elicit physical love and affection ("beautiful expression" in general) from the one you love. In most contexts, this involves a romantic kind of love. Sadly, our society has cheapened this type of love - and it seems to be the only kind of love that's celebrated in our entertainment culture. (And frankly it's only "celebrated" in a one-dimensional and often exploitative manner). For a biblical picture of erotic love, you need go no further than the Song of Solomon.

Philia is Friendship Love. It is not sexual in nature, though (in the right circumstance) it can lead to or complement Eros. Philia is the kind of bond seen in Scripture between David and Jonathan. It's the kind of love talked about by Jesus, who said: "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends." Philia is the embodiment of everything a true, meaningful friendship represents. I have often counseled teenagers that they should pursue Philia love with a prospective girlfriend or boyfriend well before they contemplate any other kind of love. The exception to that is....

Agape love is the selfless love for others. In Exodus 32, Moses confronts God and asks forgiveness for the people of Israel. God refuses, at first, to forgive them, but allows that no penalty or sin is on Moses' head. Moses isn't satisfied, and casts his fate with those of the people. If God won't forgive the people of Israel, then Moses wants to be punished along with them. THAT is Agape love. It is, in fact, a picture of what Jesus did on the cross for our sins. Selfless, sacrificial love - in which nothing is asked in return. This is the kind of love that everyone should pursue.

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17:30:02, 29/1/2010

banking issues ...

2010-01-28T11:07:00.002+08:00

just a few pics to start this blog entry ...

first up ... someone that i do not have a crush on sent me this -_- and suddenly felt guilty ... *shrug* ... it's probably from a teenager magazine .. so yeah ... u know what to expect when it comes from that type of magazine ...

next, someone sent me this pic too ... thinking it looks like one of the much cuter cookies that i made (those giant smilie-faced m&m cookies i made for manda.. in dec (i think)

finally ... "No Perfect People Allowed" ... how true is that? we're all imperfect in our own ways ... so it's ok to be imperfect =)

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alright ... now, i have classes at 1.30pm .. so i need to leave latest .. around 12.30pm .. so i better blog fast ..

anyway, i just spent 45mins or so at the POSB/DBS bank in yishun (which is about 5-10mins) from my home ... cos both ... BOTH ... my debit cards suddenly refused to work =(

they were both rejected at the petrol kiosk and online ... which is strange, cos they both work for NETS transactions and ATM withdrawals ... *shrug*

anyway, the bank checked both cards and the account ... and found no trouble at all ... however ... the guy on the hotline (that i had to call, cos the counter lady couldn't help me with it) said that i had tried to make a transaction at 4am on the 23rd (sat morning) .. and well ... u'd be hard pressed to find me awake at 4am! ... so it sounds like someone tried to purchase with my debit card number ... O.O ... freaky ...

anyway, it failed ... and i just checked my ibanking .. looks like it's all fine ... i ought to check my ibanking more frequently ...

alright ... i think thats it for now ... maybe i'll blog again .. or update this post after classes today ...

11:18:32, 28/1/2010

extra large pau =/

2010-01-27T18:20:00.002+08:00

extra large pau ... extra mixed fillings ... extra mixed feelings ...

*sigh* ...

happiness, relief, hunger, anger, annoyance, migraine (pain), numbness, irritation, hunger ...

*sigh* ... more or less in that order

bet my calorie intake so far today is below 500 calories ... probably below 400 calories ...

today ...

2010-01-26T20:09:00.007+08:00

ok, this pic wasn't taken today ... it was taken on the first friday of the semester ... before lunch, before we watched sherlock holmes at JP ... it's a picture of our reflections off the ceiling of the elevator =)

--------- --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- ---------

*ok, enough digressing ... back to the topic ... today ...*

clean up! ishimura? brownies, brownie cake? icing? m&ms??

well ... those key words would sum-up today ....

spent an hour or so this morning cleaning up my room ... then proceeded to bake a tray of walnut double choc (seems like this is the latest variant) brownies ...

butter -115gm
sugar - 200gm
vanilla - 5gm (?) - abt 1 tsp
eggs - 2 (100gm odd)
flour - 60gm
baking powder - a pinch
cocoa powder - 30gms (argh .. i'm running out of this)
choc chips - a handful
walnuts - 7-8 pieces

while i had the first tray in the oven ... with the clock ticking ... i started mixing the 2nd batch, for celestine's cake-shaped brownie ...and ... low and behold ...

i ran out of white sugar ...

time check ... 16mins ...

alright ... grabbed my wallet, keys, handphone ... and hurried over to Shop-n-save ... bought 1kg of fine grain sugar and hurried back ...

time check ... 7 mins ... alright ... that didn't take very long ... managed to put the 2nd batch together in the cake pan before the first tray was done ... so ... just took one tray out and put the cake pan in ...

-some 30mins passed-

and just as the timer sounded and i took the cake pan out of the oven ... andrea & sheryl called to say they had arrived at northpoint ...

took a quick shower and went to meet them for lunch at ishimura ... and ...horror of all horrors! ... ishimura doesn't have anything vegetarian anymore!!! T.T .. had to settle for ...

chicken katsu curry omurice ... with the chicken on a separate dish ... so i had ... omurice with curry, 2 pieces of carrot and potato in the curry ... quite pityful ...

headed to my place to study ... and decorate the cake-shaped brownie ... with icing and mini m&ms ... spent the rest of the time working on DCM and DCS ... then took some photos with photobooth =)

yes, this is the cake-shaped brownie ... amanda insisted that we write "Happy Birthday Celestine" but mirror image ... i didn't want to try writing the whole name, celestine, cos there are too many letters for a small cake-shaped brownie ... so ... she has to settle for "yppah yadhtrib tselec"

a few of the less un-glam photobooth pics .. =)

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20:37:27, 26/1/2010

*edit*

Here's a link i want to keep ... and something that i feel ... all teachers, including myself ... should aim for ... =) i hope i never forget ... and always look toward this goal ...

*note - 5 parts!

swayed ...

2010-01-26T09:24:00.002+08:00

what causes us to be swayed from logic? .. and behave irrationally? why does it feel so appealing? well ... here's a very concise summary ... based on the book "SWAY - The irresistable pull of irrational behavior" ... i'd recommend everyone read this book at least once ...

anyway, a couple of things sway our logic (that is, if we're logical to begin with) ..

1) diagnosis bias - we often label people in situations ... which results in us ignoring all other evidence that contradicts our diagnosis ... no matter how important and critical that evidence is ...

2) aversion to loss / loss aversion (even if there really isn't any loss); so sometimes it would be aversion to possible loss

3) commitment - commitment isn't a bad thing ... unless you realise what you're committed to ... is bad ... if just makes it more difficult to abort and get out of it ...like how former American President Bush was committed to the war in Iraq .. and how former American President Johnson was committed to the was in Vietnam ... it's the same as how we may be committed to a relationship that isn't going anywhere, but just because we've been in it for a long time, we're committed to staying ... even though it's rational ...

4) Value attribution (sounds familiar? it's in ed psych as well) - the value we attribute to something fundamentally changes the way we perceive it ... say we get a $100 sweater at a 80% discount ... and pay only $20 for it ... do we value it at $20? or $100? ... say we pay a 50% discount for a theatre pass for 15 pre-scheduled shows ... do we think ... since i only paid 50%, it's alright if i miss a few shows? after all, i only paid for half of them ...

5) extrinsic motivations over-powering intrinsic motivations ... - most educators would be familiar with this ... and why extrinsic motivations should only be used as surprises, and not promised rewards ...

6) pressure to conform to the social environment - how no one raises a hand in class if no one else does ...

7) initiators & blockers - initiators often offer new ideas, while blockers find faults with those ideas ... pretty soon, the voice of the blocker is discounted and ignored ... like how America labeled France as a 'blocker' to the Iraq war and even re-named their french fries, calling them 'freedom fries' ... blockers often add balance to a discussion and open eyes to other views ... but when labeled and discounted .. well, there's nothing left to stop the initiator from bulldozing forward into irrational behavior ...

that said, not all initiatives offered by initiators are irrational, blockers just help sort them out ...

2nd entry for 2010 ...

2010-01-25T22:33:00.003+08:00

the time is 22:35:30 now ... and i'm wondering why i'm blogging .. well ... perhaps it's the only outlet i can find? ... *shrug* ... i wonder why i've suddenly felt the urge ... or perhaps the need? ... to express my thoughts and feelings somewhere ...

today was .. relatively uneventful ... DCM201 in the morning ...only 2 presenters today cos one was on medical leave ... yeah ... my micro-teaching will be next wednesday ... after the practicum briefing ... =/

had yoghurt ice cream in school ...with brindha, jas and del ...cos the bazaar came back to NIE ... will probably be the last one i see for a while? unless i cross-over to the degree programme .. well, the bazaar stuff is pretty much the same as all the previous bazaars ... i guess it's more for those who just got to NIE?

oh yeah ... toyed with the idea of asking the yoghurt aunty to mix my brownie into the yoghurt =P ...

after a loooong break ... DCE201 class ... pretty much the class that most of us feel is quite ... pointless ... the tutor is funny enough ... i kinda feel that she tries too hard to be funny though ... and she digresses a lot .. and doesn't really close lessons properly ... =/

met del and jas for a light snack after class before heading home ... had cheese fries x2 ..

had dinner after getting home .. sat down to vegetate .. only to realize that i had to give tuition in 20mins ...

but well, i somehow got the strength and patience to last through the tuition ... got paid today too ...

right now ... i feel ... exhausted ... not tired ... exhausted ... *sigh* ...

23:00:54, 25/1/2010

i wonder .. a joy a day? ... would it work? ...365 joys a year ... sure sound like something to look forward to everyday ... but yes, there will be days that seem so rotten ... with no silver lining ... but at the end of the day, no matter how thing look ... i hope that such days won't exist ... cos i can't bring myself to think that a God who loves us so much would let those days exist ... =)

After a year or so ....

2010-01-24T20:04:00.003+08:00

well, it's been over a year since my last blog entry ... and i'm quite sure no one enters to check anymore ... except for the occasional tumble weed that the desert wind blows across ...

anyway, that aside ... a lot has happened over the past year of 2009 ... well, i know it's already 2010 ... but let me reminisce the past year a little ...

well ... frankly i'm not even sure of what to blog about ... well ... in 2009 ...

-> got my driver's licence! yeah! - in fact, i'll actually be taking my P-plates down pretty soon =)
-> i had to move out of hall - not sure if it's a good or bad thing ... but well yeah ... i had to move out ... so i've gotta travel to school everyday =/
-> i now drive to school almost everyday ... or rather every school day ...
-> carpooling is ... interesting ... being in a closed space (like a car) with several people help you get to know them pretty quickly .. whether you want to or not ...
-> i returned to, and finished my first practicum at Innova Primary...
-> i'll be going back there in about a month from now for my second (and potentially final) practicum ..
-> i hope i'll manage to maintain my 4.27 (or was it 4.29) GPA ... hopefully pull it up a bit more ... and hopefully crossover to the degree program immediately ...
-> as shallow as it may seem ... i'm tired of being single and i long for a relationship .. but as for whether i am actually prepared ... i have no idea ...
-> sometimes i wish i never learnt to bake ... or perhaps never baked for my friends ... cos well ... sometimes i feel that "everyone loves my cookies/brownies/*insert generic baked/cooked/fried treat here* ... but well ... it seems like no one love me ..."
-> i wonder what life would be like if i was born a girl ... how different would life be?
-> something major happened in church ... and well, i'm now attending Maranatha SDA church instead of Jurong SDA church ... where i grew up and where my membership is ... i wish i had someone who'd understand enough that i could just sit down with and talk to about this ... well ... i've already talked to someone about it ... but still ... i wish ...
-> my previous cell phone, a windows mobile phone, MWg Zinc II, was lost/stolen in Vietnam ...
-> i've switched from windows to mac ... although i can still operate windows at a rather efficient level ... but i find myself trying to use mac short-cuts in windows ...
-> i wish the PAC@GOV website supports Safari Browser ... or at least firefox or chrome ...
-> i wish NIE's practicum website supports any of the above as well ...
-> as a result of my previous phone getting lost/stolen, i've switched to an IPhone ... the big plus is that the IPhone syncs with a Mac so much better than a WM phone with a Mac ... oh yeah, the other plus is the number of apps and games =P
-> i wonder why people like alcohol so much ... i'd drink premium grape juice over premium wine/alcohol any day ...
-> i feel sad when my friends delight in alcohol ... especially when it's clear that it dulls the mind and senses ...
-> had a rather quiet christmas ...

alright ... i think thats enough for 2009 ... now for 2010 ...

-> i think this sem is quite crazy ... although we only have 3 modules ... we have only 5/6 weeks to finish everything!!!
-> i'm looking forward to the coming 2nd practicum ... looking forward to working with the teachers at innova ... learning more ... and teaching the kids too =)
-> i'm hoping that there wouldn't be too much politics at innova ...
-> i'm also hoping that no one would steal my game-concept idea ... so i guess i should hurry and finish it ... then i can copyright and publish it ...
-> i'm wondering why i'm blogging after a whole year ...
-> i've been baking brownies for my friends in NIE a lot this sem ... not sure what the real reason is .. but i think i'm trying to cheer amanda up a little ... it makes me so sad to think about her tragedy ...
-> i wonder if my concern for amanda is due to/ partially due to her sharing the same name with another amanda (well, it obviously has to be another amanda of she wouldn't be sharing the same name) from my secondary school days ...
-> i bought another card game, citadels ... =)
-> if i could all my card games ... and i add bohnanza (which my eldest brother owns) ... i have ... 9 (although one is misplaced somewhere in my room) unique card games =) anyone wanna organize a card game get together at someone's house?

and ... i think thats it for now ... i think this blog entry answers many questions that many people have been asking me ... but i doubt most of those people would read this ... so .. =/

Jeremy - 20:39:16, 24/1/2010

*edit*
-> i wish blogger supported safari browser better too! grrrr

Relient K - Must Have Done Something Right

2008-12-05T22:43:00.001+08:00

I'm Not Who I Was

2008-11-14T22:37:00.003+08:00

The song that set a number of high-schoolers in the states on a war path, wearing a shirt saying

"I'm Not Who I Was" on the front

and

"Ask Me Why" on the back ..

it's also the song that i heard on klove some time back and well, i love it =)

click here for the link to the youtube music video =) ... or just copy and paste the link ... - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZpOLyR8MwiA

Brandon Heath - I'm Not Who I Was
From the album Don't Get Comfortable

Brandon Heath – I’m Not Who I Was
From the album – Don’t Get Comfortable

I wish you could see me now
I wish I could show you how
I'm not who I was
I used to be mad at you
A little on the hurt side too
But I'm not who I was

I found my way around
To forgiving you
Some time ago
But I never got to tell you so

I found us in a photograph
I saw me and I had to laugh
You know, I'm not who I was
You were there, you were right above me
And I wonder if you ever loved me
Just for who I was

When the pain came back again
Like a bitter friend
It was all that I could do
To keep myself from blaming you

I reckon it's a funny thing
I figured out I can sing
Now I'm not who I was
I write about love and such
Maybe 'cause I want it so much
I'm not who I was

I was thinking maybe I
I should let you know
I am not the same
But I never did forget your name
Hello

Well the thing I find most amazing
In amazing grace
Is the chance to give it out
Maybe that's what love is all about

I wish you could see me now
I wish I could show you how
I'm not who I was

2008-11-12T23:45:00.002+08:00

well, you really don't need to feel guilty ...

sometimes, people simply feel happy being around someone that they made happy =)

no necessity to re-pay or whatever ... just appreciate and let the person feel appreciated =)

it's the thought that counts ...

that is, unless the so-called 'thought' doesn't concur with the actions =/

2008-10-01T23:25:00.004+08:00

tch.... well... who would have thought?... a day or two after i posted the stuff about nice guys finishing last?... i realise i'm quite a fool...

Everyone in the world is worth being nice to. Because God never creates inferior human beings, each person deserves respect and dignity.

... and well ... the the word 'love' in english just doesn't cut it ... 'love' has 3 forms in greek ... and since agape-love is an attitude ... i could sub 'nice' in place of 'love' here and it'll still make perfect sense ....

1 cor 13:1-3

If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but am not nice, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but am not nice, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but am not nice, I gain nothing.

btw, ever heard this arguement?

too much learning overtaxes the brain

well ... we cannot overload the human brain. It has fourteen billion cells. If used to the maximum, this human computer inside out heads could contain all the knowledge of humanity from the beginning of the world and still have room left over.

I guess there is a limit to how much we can absorb in a day .. but well, the human brain is amazing ... it stores everything we encounter ... the problem isn't data entry .. it's retrieval .. cos we simply suck at organising our data ... (think of how de-fragging a computer hdd speeds it up ... if only we could de-frag our brains ... =P)

it's really true huh? ...

2008-09-29T22:17:00.001+08:00

nice guys come in last ...

enough said.

new toy =P

2008-09-17T23:06:00.003+08:00

heh heh ... i just bought a new toy =P

yup, it's a lensbaby, a cute strange-looking lens that is 'finger' focus, rather than manual or auto focus ... heh heh ... the learning curve is pretty steep ... but i think i'll manage =P

something ... interesting ....

2008-09-05T20:24:00.001+08:00

Apparently ... written by a guy (not me)

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

You might agree with it, but when it actually happens 99% of girls don't realize it 'til it is too late
and that guy who did it is so frustrated that he has moved on to someone who will take notice.

From a guys point of view:

We don't care if you talk to other guys.
We don't care if you're friends with other guys.
But when you're sitting next to us, and some random guy walks into the room
and you jump up and tackle him without even introducing us, yeah, it pisses us off.
It doesn't help if you sit there and talk to him for ten minutes without even acknowledging the fact that we're still there.

We don't care if a guy calls you, but at 2 in the morning we do get a little concerned.
Nothing is that important at 2 a.m. that it can't wait till he morning.

Also, when we tell you you're pretty/beautiful/gorgeous/cute/ stunning, we freaking mean it.
Don't tell us we're wrong.We'll stop trying to convince you.

The sexiest thing about a girl is confidence.

Yeah, you can quote me.

Don't be mad when we hold the door open.

Take Advantage of the mood im in.

LET US PAY FOR YOU! DON'T 'FEEL BAD'
We enjoy doing it.
It's expected.
Smile and say 'thank you.'

Kiss us when no one's watching.
If you kiss us when you know somebody's looking, we'll be more impressed.

You don't have to get dressed up for us.
If we're going out with you in the first place, you don't have to feel the

need to wear the shortest skirt you have or put on every kind of makeup you own.
We like you for WHO you are and not WHAT you are.
Honestly, i think a girl looks more beautiful when she's just in her pj's.
Or my t-shirt and boxers, not all dolled up.

Don't take everything we say seriously.
Sarcasm is a beautiful thing.
See the beauty in it.
Don't get angry easily.

Stop using magazines/media as your bible.
Don't talk about how hott Morris Chesnutt, Brad Pitt, or Jesse McCartney is in front of us.
It's boring, and we don't care.
You have girlfriends for that.

Whatever happened to the word 'handsome'/'beautiful'.
I'd be utterly stunned by a girl who greeted me with 'Hey handsome!' instead of 'Hey baby/ stud/ cutie/ sexy' or whatever else you can think of.
On the other hand im not sayin i wouldn't like it either.

Girls: I cannot stress this enough: IF YOU AREN'T BEING TREATED RIGHT BY A GUY, DON'T WAIT FOR HIM TO CHANGE. DITCH HIS SORRY DISGRACE-TO-THE-MALE-POPULATION ASS, AND FIND SOMEONE WHO WILL TREAT YOU WITH UTTER RESPECT
Someone who will honor your morals.
Someone who will make you smile when you're at your lowest.
Someone who will care for you even when you make mistakes.
Someone who will love you, no matter how bad you make them feel.
Someone who will stop what theyre doing just to look you in the eyes....and say 'i love you' ..........AND ACTUALLY MEAN IT!

*****Give the nice guys a chance*****

Holdin Hands-
Girls : If you want to hold his hand, gently bump into it a couple of times.
Guys : Grab it if it happens more than once.

Cuddling-
Girls : When you want to cuddle with him, tell him you're cold.
Guys : Automatically move closer to her.

Movies-
Girls : During a movie, if he puts his arm around you, tilt your head on his shoulder
Guys : Lift her chin up and kiss her.

Loving each other-
Guys : When she tells you she loves you, look deep into her eyes, give her a peck on the lips, and tell her you love her too... And mean it.

Laying below the stars-
Girls : When you're both laying under the stars, put your head on his chest and close your eyes as you listen to his steady heart beat
Guys : Whisper in her ear and link your hands with hers. Now make a wish about something you would like to happen Between you and your crush....

Guys: no grabbing!!!

Guys repost this if you agree.

Girls repost this if you think it's cute.

Every Guy who isn't a jerk will agree with this, so we hope that all the girls that read this will repost this .

The True History Of The Hare And The Tortoise

2008-08-26T21:20:00.002+08:00

The True History Of The Hare And The Tortoise
(Written by Lord Dunsany)

For a long time there was doubt with acrimony among the beasts as to whether the Hare or the Tortoise could run the swifter. Some said the Hare was the swifter of the two because he had such long ears, and others said the Tortoise was the swifter because anyone whose shell was so hard as that should be able to run hard too. And lo, the forces of estrangement and disorder perpetually postponed a decisive contest.

But when there was nearly war among the beasts, at last an arrangement was come to and it was decided that the Hare and the Tortoise should run a race of five hundred yards so that all should see who was right.

“Ridiculous nonsense!” said the Hare, and it was all his backers could do to get him to run.

“The contest is most welcome to me,” said the Tortoise, “I shall not shirk it.”

O, how his backers cheered.

Feeling ran high on the day of the race; the goose rushed at the fox and nearly pecked him. Both sides spoke loudly of the approaching victory up to the very moment of the race.

“I am absolutely confident of success,” said the Tortoise. But the Hare said nothing, he looked bored and cross. Some of his supporters deserted him then and went to the other side, who were loudly cheering the Tortoise’s inspiriting words. But many remained with the Hare. “We shall not be disappointed in him,” they said. “A beast with such long ears is bound to win.”

“Run hard,” said the supporters of the Tortoise.

And “run hard” became a kind of catch-phrase which everybody repeated to one another. “Hard shell and hard living. That’s what the country wants. Run hard,” they said. And these words were never uttered but multitudes cheered from their hearts.

Then they were off, and suddenly there was a hush.

The Hare dashed off for about a hundred yards, then he looked round to see where his rival was.

“It is rather absurd,” he said, “to race with a Tortoise.” And he sat down and scratched himself. “Run hard! Run hard!” shouted some.

“Let him rest,” shouted others. And “let him rest” became a catch-phrase too.

And after a while his rival drew near to him.

“There comes that damned Tortoise,” said the Hare, and he got up and ran as hard as could be so that he should not let the Tortoise beat him.

“Those ears will win,” said his friends. “Those ears will win; and establish upon an incontestable footing the truth of what we have said.” And some of them turned to the backers of the Tortoise and said: “What about your beast now?”

“Run hard,” they replied. “Run hard.”

The Hare ran on for nearly three hundred yards, nearly in fact as far as the winning-post, when it suddenly struck him what a fool he looked running races with a Tortoise who was nowhere in sight, and he sat down again and scratched.

“Run hard. Run hard,” said the crowd, and “Let him rest.”

“Whatever is the use of it?” said the Hare, and this time he stopped for good. Some say he slept.

There was desperate excitement for an hour or two, and then the Tortoise won.

“Run hard. Run hard,” shouted his backers. “Hard shell and hard living: that’s what has done it.” And then they asked the Tortoise what his achievement signified, and he went and asked the Turtle. And the Turtle said, “It is a glorious victory for the forces of swiftness.” And then the Tortoise repeated it to his friends. And all the beasts said nothing else for years. And even to this day, “a glorious victory for the forces of swiftness” is a catch-phrase in the house of the snail.

And the reason that this version of the race is not widely known is that very few of those that witnessed it survived the great forest-fire that happened shortly after. It came up over the weald by night with a great wind. The Hare and the Tortoise and a very few of the beasts saw it far off from a high bare hill that was at the edge of the trees, and they hurriedly called a meeting to decide what messenger they should send to warn the beasts in the forest.

They sent the Tortoise.

taken from http://www.flashfictiononline.com/fpublic0009-true-history-hare-tortoise-lord-dunsany.html

2008-08-19T23:56:00.002+08:00

A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops. - Henry Brooke Adams

If anybody else can do it, you can do it better. - Sonya Carson

2008-08-17T23:39:00.002+08:00

lets see if the pictures wanna appear this time .... Zzzzzzzzzzz

all in the same order as they were supposed to have appeared .. (i think)

and finally the comic strips ... =)

i'm back? ... for now lah ... =/

2008-08-10T23:13:00.002+08:00

i'm back! not sure how long i'll be trying to update my blog regularly ... but it depends on a few factors ... some not within my control :S

anyways .... lets see what has happened so far ...

hmmmmmmmmmmmm.............

a lot has happened ... well ... first off, i'm no longer at innova primary ... kinda missing em ... i'm currently in NIE =)

the strawberry cheese cakes u see there? ... i baked em for my colleagues before i left =P

yeah ... anyways yesterday ... (and in 3 mins it's gonna be day-before yesterday ...)was national day yeah.. and at church, we had 'international day' of worship =) to co-incide with national day ... yeah ... thats the 5th pic on top ...

the day before national day ... (which would be the day before the day before yesterday or 3 days ago) we had national day celebration cum project runway at school (or rather NIE) ...

just a few pictures ... the rest are in my photobucket folder ... drop me a note if u want the link ...

a little brain-dead now ... anyways here are a few comic strips ...

2008-06-17T11:37:00.000+08:00

new high score =/ but still quite low ... =(

TD (flash version)

2008-06-16T23:09:00.001+08:00

lolx ... new record =) ... but the creator scored 90 ... :S

Tower Defence! (flash game .... )

2008-06-16T09:27:00.002+08:00

hahah ... just thought someone out there who happens to read my blog may be interested in this game =)

http://www.jeannettevejarano.com/games/tower-defence.html

i got 66pts .... cos of poor tower build =/ ... will try again later and paybe post a screen shot =P

*update ... 67pts on round 2 ...

birthdays ... birthdays ....

2008-06-16T00:19:00.006+08:00

went for a birthday party last night ... and another today ... whoops i mean sat night and sun afternoon ... ahhaha ... didn't realise that it's already past midnight ... just ... not feeling tired yet =/ ... oh yeah, raked in 3 mosquitoe frags today ... one aedes too >.<

anyways as i was saying ... birthdays birthdays ... just under a month back i went for the 21st birthday party of 2 of my church friends ... sat night was the 21st birthday of my JC classmate .... and sun afternoon for 2 of my church friends ... one 20th, one 15th ... ahh ... whats with all the sudden parties? =X

anyways i only got pics of sunday's party =) no pics from leonard's (my JC classmate) party cos i suspected that there'll be plenty of cameras ... and i was right! so no point bringing another cam there ... hahaha ...

happy birthday guys! (any anyone who's birthday is coming up soon too)

The birthday boys, ZhenMing(left) and Wayne(right) ...

ditto

...

happy birthday! (sorry! forgot to turn the flash on ... >.<")

more happy birthday ... =/

christon making sure that we're all 'in-tune' before starting the song ... LoLx ..

ZhenMing & Wayne cutting their birthday cake ... (i won't comment further about what this looks like ...)

ZhenMing and wayne spraying the cake with air (and whatever else that cometh out of their mouths ... =X)

still cutting the cake ...

and as christon said ..."right, woman go cut the cake!"

life goes on ....

the next 5 years ... ...

2008-06-13T22:37:00.002+08:00

thats what the over-head bridge from Buena Vista MRT station to MOE building looked like at 9+ this morning ...

anyways, like the title states ... this entry is gonna be about the next 5 years ... which have been decided for me ... in a sense ...

well, at least i decided to walk this path =) and i hope i'm with God on this path too =) at least he's cleared the first hurdle for me ... that was the teachers training agreement signing, which was supposed to be on a saturday but, with God's help, was done this morning =]

so well .. the next 5 years? 2 years at NIE then another 3 at (hopefully) innova pri ... where i'm currently at =) before i go back to studying ... well ... that's the plan for now ... at least ..

thank you God =)

life goes on ...

oh dear ....

2008-06-10T22:30:00.002+08:00

how did i possibly forget to blog about the church camp? ... well, it was last weekend ... fri, sat, sun ... at sofitel resort in M'sia ... nothing special about the resort ... only special thing was that it was a combined church camp! the first of it's type =) where the members of all the Seventh-Day Adventist churches came together for 3 days of fun, fellowship and revival ... mainly revival though =X cos there wasn't alot of free time ... but we made do with what we could get =)

was quite surprised to see some people there =) didn't really expect many of the youths from the other churches to be there ... well ... not really sure why i didn't expect them to be there, but i'm glad they were =) yups ... had a good amount of time to catch up with lots of them ... the guys who're now in NS, (now that i've ord-ed =P) or are studying and the girls who are now studying in various places ... also got to know many of the younger youths ... those in pri and sec sch now ... their reactions were quite interesting when they learnt that this 'kor-kor' is already a teacher ... lolx ...

anyways the highlight of the camp was the speaker for the english congregation ... as interestingly enough, he's both a pastor an an ambassador from the Phillipines ... and he's been ambassador for 3 or was it 4 presidents where as most, if not all the other ambassadors lose their position when the president changes ...

his sermons were quite funny and yet had lots of truth and were quite serious and some of his testimonies seem just too amazing to be true .. but yet are true ... only problem is that initially it seems like he's a wee bit arrogant ... but i guess it's his speaking style ... thinking back .. i really enjoyed doug martin's sermons and testimonies during the previous Jurong Church Camps very funny, heart-warming and yet it feels like he's just the guy next door ...

hmm surprisingly i only took a hundred odd photos ... haha ... well ... honestly i was kinda annoyed at being arrowed to be photog again ... sigh ... i mean, it's alright, but do let me know earlier =/ ... i guess the 100 odd photos is cos there really wasn't alot to photograph ... most of the time was pretty sendentary ... unlike the jurong church camps where we have loads of ice-breakers and energizer activities ... (which make awesome photo opportunities!)

Jurong Youth's Special Music =)

Group photo ... with everyone, minus myself and my eldest bro ...

Youth program on sat afternoon ... was on Ellen G White ... so the guys had to take turns and try to carry a replica of the bible she carried ... which weighs 8.5kg! no joke!

yups yups ... 8.5kgs ...

That's the speaker ... Ambassador Bienvenido V. Tejano of Phillipines to New Zealand

kids program ...

some of the younger youths ... or kids =X and Iris on the key-board

and of course ... there was a baptism in the swimming pool on sat evening ...

life goes on ...

vicis, tempus temporis, tractus, hora, aetas

2008-06-10T20:37:00.002+08:00

The various Latin translations of 'time' . . .

I wonder why ... but recently I've been kinda fascinated by Latin ... oh wells ..

anyways it's been some ... erm ... 4 months since I've blogged ... I think I can safely assume no one is gonna check this? .. haha ...

I've been thinking, or rather feeling, that I'm kinda out-of-place with the youths in church etc etc ... cos 1) I'm working and 2) I'm a teacher ... and how many kids can honestly say they love and adore their teachers (certainly not all, but at least most?)

There's also the bit about homework ... haha ... they complaining about giving homework and me about having to mark homework ... lolx ... it's 2 weeks 2 days into the school holidays ... only another 7 working-days of holidays ... darn .. so fast ..

Let me try to quickly sum up how I've spent my holidays so far ..

1)25/5/08 (iirc) 1/6/08
The Records Challenge filming @ sch ..

Spent most of the day in school helping the other teachers and kids get the final touches of the balloon garden done =) =) pix will come soon .. I hope XD then went out with 5 other teachers for a very late lunch ... haha ...

Ok ok … got pics .. but poor quality off my phone … better quality ones will come soon =)

The irony is that I hated ... no no ... abhored the Chinese language when I was in primary school ... and now? I end up going for lunch with not 1, but 5 Chinese teachers! haha ... had lunch at this sushi place ... not sakae sushi .. I think it was genki sushi =)

2) 26/5/08
Art & Craft Work-Shop

spent the morning in school helping at the art & craft workshop =) spent most of the time taking photos though =) cos there were enough parent volunteers and they were doing an amazing job =) will post some photos soon … once I get them off my laptop in school =/

designed some bookmarks for the open-house from the art & craft that the kids produced =) will post them up once they get approved .. then u’ll understand why I said I’m kinda fascinated by latin … hahaha …

rushed off to a medical appt at sgh after that … quite disappointed and annoyed at the docs … cos they didn’t wanna do a MRI … and 4 or 5 docs give different diagnosis and they don’t wanna pen their diagnosis down … and without the hard copy of their diagnosis I’m not getting anywhere … especially when I need a solid diagnosis before I can get my name onto the medical board list to drop-pes status -.-””

3) 28/5/08
Visit to SCDF HQ!

Haha … yeah, some people will think I’m insane … anyways I went back to the camp where I lived out my NS life in … went back to visit my ex-boss, CMO … and see the MO in the medical centre for a memo to request for a MRI and a diagnosis for my knees … hopefully I’ll get somewhere at the next appointment … which is on the first day of term … >.<”

4) 29/5, 3/6, 5/6, 11/6(tomorrow)
Driving lessons!

Yeah, I’m finally learning to drive =) nothing much to say about it at the moment …

That’s it for the re-cap … right now .. I got math worksheets and zippy lessons to plan ..

haix … still waiting for a reply from the person at MOE side about signing the education bond thingy … I hope it all goes fine and I can get the 2 sureties and a weekday date and time when I can go and sign the bond …. If anyone reads this, pls add this to your prayer list k?

life goes on …

it sure has been a long time ...

2008-02-01T21:45:00.000+08:00

yup, it's been a long time ... some people probably don't expect this blog to be updated ... .hahah ... but here it is anyway! =)

about a week back? i did this TTI Success Insights, Personal Interests, Attitudes and Values test ... the results were interesting and enlightening. I figure i probably wouldn't have noticed them unless i spent a couple of hours on objective reflection, if not for the test ...

well, after the results were out, i did a short reflection on the test results ... and i figure i'm a unique case ... haha ... perhaps a nut-case =X

so here are the results for ...

Jeremy Tan
Classroom Teacher

YOUR ATTITUDES RANKING
1st - SOCIAL - Strong
2nd - INDIVIDUALISTIC - Strong
3rd - TRADITIONAL - Situational
4th - THEORETICAL - Situational
5th - UTILITARIAN - Indifferent
6th - AESTHETIC - Indifferent

Notice something unique yet? ... Both social and individualistic took ranks 1 and 2 ... and they're contrasting traits ...

Social - Strong
Those who score very high in this value have an inherent love of people. The social person prizes other people and is, therefore, kind, sympathetic and unselfish. They are likely to find the Theoretical, Utilitarian and Aesthetic attitudes cold and inhuman. Compared to the Individualistic value, the Social person regards helping
others as the only suitable form for human relationships. Research into this value indicates that in its purest form, the Social interest is selfless.

Individualistic - Strong
The primary interest for this value is POWER, not necessarily politics. Research studies indicate that leaders in most fields have a high power value. Since competition and struggle play a large part in all areas of life, many
philosophers have seen power as the most universal and most fundamental of motives. There are, however, certain personalities in whom the desire for direct expression of this motive is uppermost; who wish, above all, for personal power, influence and renown.
-Jeremy likes to be in situations that allow him the freedom to control his destiny and the destiny of others. His team's strategy is to attempt to dilute outsiders' influence on the results of their goals.
(haha ... somehow, it's kinda true =X)

oh wells ... what can i say? .. haha ... anyways another thing that is enlightening ... is how God knows us so much better than we know ourselves ...

TRADITIONAL - Situational
The highest interest for this value may be called "unity," "order," or "tradition." Individuals with high scores in this value seek a system for living. This system can be found in such things as conservatism or any authority that has defined rules, regulations and principles for living.
- He will have strong beliefs within a system that he feels most comfortable with.
- Jeremy lets his conscience be his guide.

THEORETICAL - Situational
The primary drive with this value is the discovery of TRUTH. In pursuit of this value, an individual takes a "cognitive" attitude. Such an individual is nonjudgmental regarding the beauty or utility of objects and seeks only
to observe and to reason. Since the interests of the theoretical person are empirical, critical and rational, the person appears to be an intellectual. The chief aim in life is to order and systematize knowledge: knowledge for the sake of knowledge.
- If Jeremy is truly interested in a specific subject, or if knowledge of specific subject matter is required for success, then he will take the initiative to learn about that subject in great depth. (this is so true)
- Jeremy has the potential to become an expert in his chosen field. (alright! expert! XD)

UTILITARIAN - indifferent
The Utilitarian score shows a characteristic interest in money and what is useful. This means that an individual wants to have the security that money brings not only for themselves, but for their present and future family. This value includes the practical affairs of the business world - the production, marketing and consumption of goods, the use of credit, and the accumulation of tangible wealth. This type of individual is thoroughly practical and conforms well to the stereotype of the average American business person. A person with a high score is likely to have a high need to surpass others in wealth.
- Overemphasizing the value of money will bore Jeremy and turn him off. (so true)

AESTHETIC - Indifferent
A higher Aesthetic score indicates a relative interest in "form and harmony." Each experience is judged from the standpoint of grace, symmetry or fitness. Life may be regarded as a procession of events, and each is enjoyed for its own sake. A high score here does not necessarily mean that the incumbent has talents in creative artistry. It indicates a primary interest in the artistic episodes of life.
- Intellectually, Jeremy can see the need for beauty, but has difficulty buying the finer things in life.
- The utility of "something" is more important than its beauty, form and harmony.

go figure ... lolx ... explains a lot to me .. =)

Lastly ...

Areas in which you have strong feelings or passions compared to others:
You have a strong desire to lead, direct and control your own destiny and the destiny of others. You have a desire to lead and are striving for opportunities to advance your position and influence. Others may believe you are jockeying for position and continually stepping "over the line." They may believe that you form relationships only to "move ahead" and gain an advantage.

Areas where others' strong feelings may frustrate you as you do not share their same passion:
Understanding people who view the world based on return on investment will frustrate you. Other things are more important to you. People who emphasize the need for beauty, form and harmony in all aspects of their life may frustrate you. You have other priorities.

28 Dec ...

2007-12-28T20:28:00.000+08:00

somehow ... it seems like the year has sped up considerably for me since mid december ... well, i guess it's like that whenever there's something big coming up... for me, i guess it's starting school. This time, as a teacher, it's kinda scary .. well, the thought that i was but a JC student a 2 year back (2005) and just finished my NS just over a month back ... (nov 2007)

well, perhaps it's finding out that i'll be a form teacher of a primary 1 class in a new school with 10 pri 1 classes, 2 pri 2 classes, 1 pri 3 class, 1 pri 4 class and no pri 5 or 6 classes .. i always thought that they'd never let contract teachers become form teachers ... well, i thought i'd be an assistant teacher or something, working along-side a senior teacher so it'd be much easier on me .. (in a sense) cos well, honestly, i'd say i haven't much of an idea of what i'm supposed to do in class, what kind of class rules, how to enforce them ... and much much more ... like how to assign seats, groupings, etc etc ...

darn it ... i hope they cover A LOT during the 2 day crash course ....

on the other hand .. i guess it's the thought of suddenly entering the workforce and being treated as an adult and equal by lots of much more senior people, who have been teaching before i entered pri sch myself .. :S

it's jut so strange ... oh yeah .. i still can't remember many names :S

anyways i kinda feel bad cos i'm at home now ... cos i was supposed to be at clementi's 'botak jones' eatery with my cell group ... but the combination of being at school since 9am this morn and reaching home at 4 ... rushing some stuff for my bro's e-shop + being down with the flu... etc etc ... i just kinda fell asleep the moment i hit the bed ... didn't wake up till 6.40pm ... (and we were supposed to meet at 7pm at clementi ... :S) sry guys!! can i treat you guys to lunch/dinner next feb when i get my paycheck as apology?

alright, let's recap and go back to the past 2 weeks ... well ..

16th dec House Warming
whee ... finally had the house warming party ... almost after staying here for 4 months? .. anyways it was pretty nice ... had a few families from church over for dinner & dedicated the home to Christ =) also found out that vegetales is exceptionally good at entertaining kids as well as adults! =X heh heh ...

20th dec House Warming #2 + cookie packing
ok, cos our house isn't really big, we had 2 house warming parties so far (yes, so far ... gonna have ANOTHER one on 1st Jan) this was for a few other families who are closer to my parents and wanted to visit ... and it happened that my eldest brother (nat) had his church's youth over to help pack cookies for their christmas program (why pack cookies at my house, you may ask ... well, it's cos they were baked here ... around 450+ cookies of 3 types ...so around 1350 odd cookies ... quite crazy huh?)

played the game of life and bohnanza. with em ... bohnanza was really fun =) i only wish the rules were clearer =/

22nd-23rd dec sleepover @ andrew's place
yeah, was pretty cool ... pizza dinner + mushroom soup + fried bee hoon + seaweed chicken + baked fries + ginger/cinnamon/clove/raisin/chocolate chip cookies... which pretty much sums up why i fell sick ... =X anyways we had a lan-party =) (pity we only played dota=/) and movie marathon ... watched Hairspray, Transformers and Finding Nemo(i have NO idea who chose this ... :S) played lots of bridge(the card game) too =P and kaylin had a loosing streak lolx ...

24th dec christmas program at church + 8 baptisms on christmas eve =)
ok, the christmas program was pretty good ... i suppose, i kinda felt last year's was better though, the docor this round was really really good though! a huge web of stars strung over the pews from the 2nd floor balcony to the stage ... i guess the baptisms were ment to be the 'highlight' of the night, but i think it was too early and not 'highlighty' enough .. the non-standard dramas were good, only ... perhaps a little over-used =X i think more traditional dramas would be better for christmas =)

25 dec dinner at my aunt's place on christmas day
yups yups ... went to my aunt's place for christmas dinner with my relatives on my dad's side of the family ... met up with my cousins again .. haha ... had dinner, chit-chatted and had fun ... had alcohol free apple cider as well .. haha ..

28th dec Teacher's meeting at Innova Primary School ..
yeah, got a call from the school yesterday, about the meeting today .. well, went there not knowing what to expect .. =/ a bit of a shock to me ... well, i mean realising that i'll have to step up to and take a much larger role than expected ... yeah, got to know a couple of very nice teachers too =) picked a table in the staff room .. it's pretty near the door ... so i guess i can't slack too much =X haha ... i'm thinking of bringing my pyagu to office on monday .. haha ... maybe put up some of the posters and charts on the class room walls as well .. (courtesy of the teacher who was originally meant to take my class! seriously! thank you SOOOO MUCH!!! really appreciate the posters & charts ..) gotta bring a bug, stationary box some stationary etc etc ... cos my table is like ... empty now ... :S

i guess that's it for now ...

Noise ....

2007-12-14T10:22:00.000+08:00

Well .. .hahaha ... i guess this really really goes to show that there is 'visual noise' that distracts us .. VERY easily ...

i mean, i'm just wrapping up my cell grp lesson prep ... and well ... here i am blogging and distracted from what i my prep ....

anyways here's what i really wanted to post =) hope this makes your day and u have a good laugh =)

credit to : http://markjaffrey.blogspot.com/2006/11/top-ten-worst-cell-group-ice-breakers.html
and
http://www.cccsmallgroups.typepad.com/
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Tuesday, November 14, 2006
Top Ten WORST Cell Group Ice Breakers

10. Share the worst sin you’ve ever committed.

9. If you were God, who would you punish first?

8. Which person in this group do you think needs to find Jesus the most?

7. Which people at your church do you wish would find a different church, and why?

6. If you could erase any verse out of the Bible, which one would it be?

5. Share the juiciest piece of gossip you know so we can pray about it.

4. If you could have anything from your neighbor’s house, what would it be?

3. What’s your favorite of The 10 Commandments to break?

2. If you could change anything about your spouse, what would it be?

1. If you could commit any sin and get away with it, what would it be?

Finally, an update ...

2007-12-05T09:19:00.000+08:00

Nov 30th - Dec 2nd

Annual Church Camp! =D (as usual, click here or the pic to access the full album)

yeah, it was really fun =) and we're quite a wild group .. haha ...

i mean, just take a look at this .. hahaha ... during the 2nd day's 'Gala Dinner' table games ... LoLx ...

see the flying spoon? =P yeah, they had to tie the spoon to rafia string and thread it through everyone ... down the shirt collar and out the pant-leg then up the pant-leg and out of the shirt collar ... O.o ... LoLx ..

that's my table's structure creation ... LoLx ... it came from well ... "just start making squares everyone ... we'll get somewhere" ... hahah ... true enough ...

my table's amazing cheer performance =P ... took us about 2 seconds to finish? =P ..

remember i said we're pretty wild? .. haha ... meet our table's Zoolander (if u dun know who zoolander is, go google it!)

oh yeah, another thing i wanted to blog about was making pizza! yeah .. haha ... made pizza for dinner the other night ... =)

yeah ... i guess thats about it for now ... hmmmz ...

24th Nov .... A lot has happened ...

2007-11-25T23:07:00.000+08:00

i've thought about it ... and i've decided, i won't start this post with the negatives ... as big a deal as it is ... it won't do much to keep lamenting it ...

i shall start with the happier stuff ..

(click the pic to visit the full album) or click HERE

Well, jurong youth had yet another afternoon outing to west coast park =) fun n games ... a short song service, sharing and some organised games before we let loose at the playground there ... hahaa ... only thing is ... i didn't know till a few hours before we went ... -.-" ... lolx ...

anyways, i still went, and still got all soaked in prespiration despite being in formal attire ... =X haha ...

now, the gloomy part ...

http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/singaporelocalnews/view/313592/1/.html

mainly Reuben Kee ... although i never really got to know him well, my brothers and lots of the other guys in church really know him ... and no one would disagree with me saying that he was a darn nice guy, treating everyone really really well ... awesome sportsman and musician ... [http://www.youtube.com/user/ReubenKee]

it's just ... so sudden ... :'(

2007-11-15T12:47:00.001+08:00

hmmmz ... i just realised that i haven't blogged much recently ...well, not alot has happened i guess ... other than ...

1) going back to camp on monday (after a whole month of off+leave XD) and collecting my PINK IC .. yea, it's pink! not blue XD met some of my friends from the same in-take while going around to get the diff people to sign my clearence form =) ... ahh wells .. going back there again tomorrow ... =/ even though i've ORD-ed! =P lolx .. will have to exchange my ic for a visitor pass =/

2) haven't done much except play old pc games .. .ahhaha ... dun exactly like the newer ones ... too graphic intensive ... game play not as nice =/ ..

3) gonna make some cheese cakes later ... dunno if i should make mini ones or just make a big one ... =/

err ... err ... i dunno what else to blog le ... haven't made anything new for a while ...

oh yeah! i need a job!!! =X

Subway-sized cookies

2007-11-09T23:17:00.000+08:00

=P chewy/crunchy choc chip with mint + oat cookies!

1 Cor 13:5 (part)

2007-11-09T13:31:00.000+08:00

13:5 "... it[love] is not self-serving ..."

well, i guess at the end of the day, there are seasons in everyone's lives .... and like the seasons, and the weather, they don't go the way we want em to go ...

someone might say it's giving up ... well, perhaps they're right, then again, love is not self-serving ...

it'd be selfish, and self-serving to push things now .. even if feelings and everything was reciprocated ... it wouldn't be right now ... i'd just be getting in her way ..

i'm sorry.

still, i'd love to hear from you every once in a while, or get an invite to another concert (as long as they don't play music like iron egg vs 'nd'), or supplying you with snacks to get you through the long days ...

i hope we can stay as friends, and have more 'raya' =) (look up a hebrew dictionary for the meaning)

2007-11-08T17:27:00.000+08:00

well, i guess at the end of the day, life doesn't revolve around me, though i wish it would ... we all have other friends, and our friends all have their problems too ... i guess that, it's not that i was intentionally ignored ... to an extent, or at least i felt that i was ignored ... but well, the timing and chain of events were all pretty much screwed up ... and i can't just wallow in self-pity i guess ... be-moaning my own misfortune would do nothing ... after all ... thats the reason why started this blog .. isn't it? ...

~ de-novo - over again - anew - from the beginning - afresh ... ~

God i pray that you would let me labor, struggling with all your energy, which works so powerfully in me ...

sleep ... or the lack there of...

2007-11-08T08:51:00.000+08:00

ever felt like you laid on the bed the whole night without even sleeping for more than an hour of so? ...

well, maybe you can sympathise with me then .... turns out, yesterday was 'migraine-day' for me =( ... and i was at lasalle's "New Directions Music Festival 07" and yesterday's first concert ... well..

"Iron Egg VS 'ND'" ... the only thing i figure it could have been ... was a saxaphonist VS a music-technology percussionist fighting to see who could make the more annoying noises ... :S ...

go figure, sitting in a room surrounded by speakers blasting the most annoying noises known to man ...with a half a head throbbing ... :S ..

the solution? ... 2x cataflem + 1x cafagot, i figure cataflem is around the same strength of ponstan, and cafagot somewhat enhances them by around 10x (thats what the doc said) ... so just imagine .... 30x panadols[or around there]... it sure took care of the migraine, but the problem was ... i took it at night.

any anyone familar with medicine ... would know that if you take cafagot at night, don't expect to sleep very much ... well, i think i finally slept for about an hour around 6.30-7.30am ...

the second concert, tectonic, was a little easier to appreciate .. fortunately, and not as filled with annoying noises .. =)

still, i don't understand how 2 people fighting to see who can make more annoying noises can be considered a concert ... (i'm sorry, but i can't appreiate that kind of music)

. . .

2007-11-07T23:20:00.000+08:00

Status - Sick
Illness - Acute-Attentionitis
Symptoms - Feeling uneasy, unsure, insecure. may be accompanied by cold prespiration, itching, sweaty palms, lack of appetite or other similar feelings.

Well, let me break a secret to all who actually read my blog ... The reason whu i usually don't try my own cookies, or pastries, or other creations ... ... Simply cos i don't dare to.

Like everyone else i need some affirmation, selfish as it might be, but unlike many others [i think], i think my expectations are too high, and my results usually miss them... So i'd rather let someone else try it.. and let me know if they were good, before i try them myself... at least i'd have a benchmark on what 'good' is..

and please don't just say they were nice ... or good, you know, words convey but a miserable 7% of what a person means ...

it's not just cookies from the oven, or hand made chocolates ... it's not just chocolate chips, oats and mint slice in the cookies, or rum-coconut filling in the chocolates ...

they were specially made for one person, not just the generic chocolate chip cookies you can get off the shelf that would suffice as comfort food ...

well, maybe i'm just too sensitive ... or perhaps selfish .. or just ... out of tune ...

2007-11-07T10:23:00.000+08:00

*sigh* ... once again, i have to conclude, that ... something is wrong with me ...

the reason? ... quite simple ..

i made mint filled chocs ... tastes one ... and threw the whole lot out.

let me try to redeem myself now ... i hope my usual choc chip cookie recipe still works ... :S

i realise ... i haven't had a good, sweet dream ... in a LONG time ...

2007-11-06T23:30:00.000+08:00

what ever happened? ... i haven't really dreamt a good dream in a long time ... figure i haven't had a good dream since i entered NS .. :S .... what happened to my ability of realising i'm in a dream and influencing it? ..*sigh* ..

anyways, here's a run down of today's events thus far ...

1) woke up really early ... like ... 3am .. cos i was thirsty yeah ... took my HP off the charger to check the time ..

2) woke up earlier than usual, again, around 7+ ... cos i had basic driving theory today ...yeah ... test was at 9.15am ... at SSDC in ang mo kio ... was pretty simple .. i guess ... finished it in abt 10mins, checked over once through then clicked the 'end test' button ... the results? - PASSED =) went to get the results printed then got my PDL (provisional driving licence) for $25 .. T.T ... went to apply for my Final Theory test as well .. 15 Jan 4.30pm

3) cancelled my swimming lesson today ...

4) went with nat to get his road tax done ...

5) re-attempted the brownie recipe .. and this time i'm DAMN sure that something isn't right with me this week ... 2nd try, 2nd failure (as far as i'm concerned) ... this time, it looks super ugly ... though it tastes awesome ... *ARGH* ...*sigh* ...

6) went down to lasalle sia between dhoby and bugis to catch a musical performance ... pretty interesting and entertaining ... though very tiring to stand and listen ... especially on an empty stomach =( some parts were really nice though =) wish i could get the minus one of the final song =) really liked that piece of music, even though it was mainly chinese :S hahaha ...

7) long walk (2km according to the street directory) from lasalle to dhoby .. ended up missing the train just as i reached the station =( ... got home about 20mins ago ... tired ... hungry, but no appetite =/

I WANNA DREAM A NICE DREAM!!! =X

please?

I look in the mirror and ask ... ... Who are U? ...

2007-11-05T18:00:00.000+08:00

in a sense, i'm confused ... in another, i hate myself ... well, at least parts of myself .. and one part of myself is disgusted at another ... *ARGH!!!* ... i kinda love and hate the fact that guys, in general, are more 'compartmentalised' .. but some how i feel i'm like compartmentalised spaghetti ...

*sigh* ...

anyways i went out yesterday, with my church cell grps to laser quest at bukit batok hometeam ns club house .. was pretty fun .. i guess, if you ignore the fact that their equiptment doesn't exactly work well ... and they have a smart quip tagged to their logo saying 'Losers will blaim the gun' ... well, my rebuttal would be that "winners blaim the gun too", and it's true.

either way, those who really rocked at it, would probably have won either way, even if everyone had 100% working suits & guns, but the margin would be smaller. but i guess their egos would be a large ... *sigh* ... how i dislike arrogant people, and yet am fairly arrogant at times ...

sometimes ... no, often .. i wonder, who am i? ... am i really the person i think i am? ...

well, today at least, it's been fairly obvious to myself that i'm definately distracted, as in not focuses ... and it isn't just cos the basic theory driving test i have tomorrow, or the fact that i haven't had a chance to talk to iris over the phone, or the fact that i nearly blew my top yesterday and barely held it back and wayne probably did the wise thing and help me cool off ... and the real evidence of me being distracted would probably be that i tried a new brownie recipe ... and though it turned out looking pretty good ... it tasted really bland ... the reason? ... ... ... ... ... i forgot the sugar. really brilliant huh? ...

now i just need to figure out ...

just WHAT is bugging me ... ...

*sigh* ...

Mini Cheese Cake! (again)

2007-11-02T10:12:00.000+08:00

haha ... this was actually yesterday ... well, i made a trip down to AMK library to chill for a few hours + read yesterday ... was OK i guess .. the place was a bit crowded and they didn't have enough squishy chairs =(

when i got home, i decided, somewhat on whim, that i gotta try to make another batch of mini cheee cakes, and this time, they gotta be good! =P a double portion of love, 2 extra table-spoons for care, a watchful eye + early preparation of the ingredients, and they're almost perfect! =) all i need is probably to add half a tiny strawberry ontop or drizzle with chocolate =)

2007-10-31T20:59:00.000+08:00

it's so sad & depressing ... yet so sweet at the same time ...

taken from http://www.my-fugue.blogspot.com/

Chocolates! Heart Shaped Too!

2007-10-31T20:33:00.000+08:00

haha ... the day wouldn't be complete without something unhealthy, or rather chocolate-y =P

cos i was bored this afternoon ... i decided to pop by shop-&-save and pick up the one mold i thought i'd chosen to reject using completely ... well, i thought wrongly i suppose =/

this extremely *CHEAP* looking & feeling mold cost me 3 whole dollars ... well, not bad, since it's managed to give me 2 sets of 8 chocolates each .. .i.e. 16 heart-shaped chocs ... + a little experience of how to make the chocolate shells ... hmmz ... and how hard it is to knock the chocs out of the mold =(

as you can clearly see from the pic on the top, most of the chocs have been eaten =P heh heh ... 1st 8 chocs were coconut+rum filling, next 8 were filled with nutella, cos my brother asked to use nutella =/ turned out OK i guess ... only problem is i have to refridgerate the chocs in the mold to get them firm enough to knock out ... then, in room temp, the condensation forms on the chocs and they turn ugly =( ...

anyone got any advice? ...

Muffins! Yes, muffins ... healthy food for once =)

2007-10-31T14:20:00.000+08:00

Wholemeal Raisin Muffins

Wholemeal Pecan Muffins (i'm sure u can see the pecans)

Made 2 different types of muffins this morning ... haven't tasted either yet, but they sure look & smell good =)

Wholemeal Raisin Muffins & Wholemeal Pecan Muffin, pretty similar huh ... i modified the pecan muffin recipe to make it wholemeal, and threw some raisins and spices into the wholemeal muffin recipe cos it looked a little plain ...

come to think of it, i should have shredded an apple or threw some cheese in either recipe .. :S ..

oh wells, anyways, contrary to yesterday, stuff made/baked/cooked with love & care simply look & smell & taste (i think) better =P

i have concluded ....

2007-10-30T19:28:00.000+08:00

i have concluded, based on yesterday's results, and today's results ... that ...

*drum-roll*

the amount of love & care u feel & put into baking ... whether for someone, or for the love of baking, affects the out come. A lot.

hahaha ...

i didn't really put much love & care into this batch of brownie cup-cakes ... just dumped the stuff together ... whipped it ... whisked it ... laid some cups out and spooned the batter in ... didn't even gather & prepare the ingredients properly before hand ... as a result, i get the batter rising & over-flowing way too much .. the top cracking, bubbling over & looking ugly & then sinking -.-" ...

haiz ... i shall attempt another round of cheesecakes or brownie tomorrow ... with more love =P heh heh ...

or maybe something else ... anyone got any requests =D

Cheese Cup-Cakes!

2007-10-29T20:44:00.000+08:00

Cup-cake sized cheese cakes =P

heh heh ... a little over done, but still delicious =P

Plain Vanilla flavoured with a handful of chocolate chips thrown in...

oh yeah, 2nd swimming lesson tomorrow =P .. heh heh .. i hope i progress as much (or more) than i did in the previous lesson ... =) starting to feel fat from the lack of exercise and all the choc and cakes .. :S ekk ...

Dark Chocolate + Coconut filling + Rum

2007-10-25T21:22:00.000+08:00

The Final Product, and a cross-section of one of them ... not the most pretty cross-section ... i should have refridgerated it a little more ... and should have frozen the filling before putting it in .. but i was impatient :S still, it tastes awesome =)

Oh yeah, it'd dark chocolate, home-made coconut filling & rum FLAVOURING not real rum =) but it tastes awesome ... let me know if u wanna try some =P

2007-10-24T19:23:00.000+08:00

I don't know how many others out there are feeling the same way as i am .. but well, i didn't realise that today is already wednesday :S ... until i accidentally left my cursor over the computer clock and it said 24th oct, wednesday ... wow ...

i guess it's time for me to wrap up my cell lesson prep ... don't wanna leave it to the last moment ...

anyways, before i get cracking at my cell lesson v2.0, let me lament how i wish people would ask others what they would want for their birthday =X

This, is what i recieved for my birthday .. hahaha ... i'm not complaining ... but well, i'd rather a nugget-shaped chocolate mold ... like #3,4,5 on this website ... there's a very lovely looking poly-carbonate mold i saw at phoon-huat .. very nice, produces nugget looking chocs ... but it's like 30 bucks =( ... i suppose the cheaper ($17) silicone molds would do ... but well, it's a different level all together ... and of course, well above the cheap ($2-3) flimsy plastic molds ...

ahh ... just imagine the possibilities ... now i want a full set of chocolate making equipment =P ... chocolate melter/temper-er, transfer-sheets, magnetic-molds, lustre powder, cocoa butter ... argh ... =X

still, i'd be happy with a poly-carb mold ... =/

Dark Chocolate + Werther's Original ...

2007-10-24T09:36:00.000+08:00

Dark Chocolate + Werther's Original = Chocolate+Sweet+Salty heaven ... hahaha almost ... gotta refine the quantity a little more ... not bad for my first attempt i'd say ... =P

Happy Birthday Nat!!!

2007-10-21T09:04:00.000+08:00

Yep, today is my brother(nat)'s birthday =)

happy birthday nat! .. although they celebrated his birthday on friday at cell ... the two huge-ass cookies + this cake were for him =) ..

by the way ... if anyone happens to know of any other sweet-treat recipies that really rock ... let me know? .. i'm looking to try new stuff .. of course, it has to be vegetarian =)

Polina Semionova Music Video @ "Demo"

2007-10-19T08:03:00.000+08:00

this is the clip i watched like ... 3 or 4 years ago? (i think) ... IMHO, it's really amazing ... i dunno what possessed me to search youtube for it ... but well, it's amazing, the dancing, and how well the music fits the dancing ... for those of you (like me) who prefer it without the singing, it's here - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=id-bFpYQzXE

Giant Cookies ... Muahahahaaaa ....

2007-10-17T22:19:00.001+08:00

Feast your eyes upon my largest cookie creation to date ... hahaha ... approx 8"-9" in diameter ...

2007-10-17T09:16:00.000+08:00

Chocolates! with hundreds & thousands and Jelly Beans! specially for the sweet tooth =P

Home melted & moulded dark chocolate with a drop of mint oil ... guaranteed to be delicious!

ok ... i'm a little out-dated .. hahah..

2007-10-15T22:26:00.000+08:00

ok, i haven't updated for a long while now .... and well, kinda outdated .. anyways lemme try to recap some of the events that occured during that phase ..

1) ORD LOH!!! (almost) ... clearing leave now .. =P ... very shoik ...

2) baked some lemon custard cupcakes =P

3) went back to camp to celebrate my birthday + 2 others who share the same birthday (but one had to leave earlier)
(pics & possibly video coming soon)

4) combined worship @ Singapore Conference Hall, met up with lots of other SDA friends who i haven't seen for eons ... :S ... yeah ..

5) had a surprise party (planned by my co-cell ldr + my family .. i think) on my birthday =)
(pics & possibly video coming soon)

6) learning swimming from andrew! ... kenna sun burnt liao ... T.T ... 2nd lesson only ... so still can't swim .. but i'm getting somewhere! =P

so thats about it ... i think =P

Happy Birthday Christon!!

2007-09-30T22:16:00.001+08:00

30 Sep 2007 - 20070930

Event - Christon's Birthday

Location - Andrew's House

whee~ ... another birthday, another cake ... haha ... baked this one too ... 500gm of choc went into the making of this cake ... 200gm into the cake and 300gm ontop of it ...

anyways we met at Andrew's house, where we had a birthday party for christon ... was supposed to start at 5pm .. but ended up starting at 6, cos a few of us, including christon, had to go to YWC for a meeting .. :S which was supposed to end by 5pm, but ended at 5.45pm .. :S

anyways we had dinner there, macaroni & cheese sause, vegetable tempura, fried rice, chicken nuggedts and yet another cake ... haha ... after that we played some silly party games ... silly, but very very fun ... lolz ..

no other pics cos i forgot and left my cam in my bro's car ... :S T.T ..

anyways the cake was an orange butter cake with chocolate chunks =P ... (200gm of choc chunks) ... topped with chocolate, wafer and hundreds&thousands ... put a layer of wafer in the middle .. but it seems it integrated itself into the cake ... hahha ... now i know that doesn't work ...

the choc was supposed to be liquid and runny ... but i had little choice but to refridgerate it ... as a result, it became a hard slab of choc on the surface .. :S

oh wells, now i know that doesn't work either =/ hahaha

gonna bake some cupcakes sometime soon ... =)

(nat keeps suggesting i start a cake shop ... CMO said the same thing ... :S)

Bernice's Birthday!

2007-09-30T08:04:00.000+08:00

29 sep 2007 - 20070929

Event - Bernice's Birthday!

Location - Jurong English SDA church, 2nd floor, 2nd classroom

yups yupz ... cell grp 1 (the youngest cell, which really isn't all that young, anymore) celebrated bernice's birthday yesterday ... a little belated, but still within the month! =P .. hahah ... cos we had mid-autumn festival to celebrate first =/

anyways we just grabbed lunch from the courtyard and rushed to a classroom (so we wouldn't be disturbed) lit the candles, sang a happy birthday song, had her blow the candles then we just sat around chit chatting and eating cake ... hahah ... fyi, it ws baked by yours truely =P tho it was an experiment .. didn't turn out the way i wanted ... =/ on wells, i think i need coverture choc for the centre ... =/

anyways happy belated birthday bernice! (just realised i strung 3 word that start with B together ... hahaha!!!)

Pics are available here

or

http://share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=8AcN2LZu4ZNWJi¬ag=1

Combined Cell @ west coast park

2007-09-29T17:41:00.000+08:00

28 sep 2007 - 20070928

Event - Combined Cell Group

Location - West Coast Park

Well, we met for combined cell cum mid-autumn festival celebrations on fri evening ... sat around west coast park, sang some worship songs, had a short sharing by christon then some organised games by wayne and finally free & ezy before packing up (cos it was getting late & WCP very ulu ...) hahaha ... pics are available here

or

http://share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=8AcN2LZu4ZNWJR¬ag=1

2007-09-23T23:20:00.000+08:00

u know they say
"if u're at the bottom, the only way is up" ...
well, the reverse is true as well ...

it's pretty true that
"if u're at the top, the only way is down" ...
as witnessed, observed and experienced many many times ... time, and time again ...

*sigh* ...

sentosa outing photos

2007-09-17T22:17:00.001+08:00

hey all,

the photos are now available here

Youth Alive 07 pic update ..

2007-09-17T21:55:00.000+08:00

hi all, this is the link to ALL (the selected) pictures that were taken during youth alive (yes, from all the cams) ... changes include more photos and made minor changes to the 'red-tab' in the corner ... Here's the new link ...

photos of the sentosa outing will be up soon ..

for those who don't like shutterfly, pls recommend something else .. (other than flickr, nothing against flickr, just find shutterfly easier to use ...)

2007-09-02T22:46:00.000+08:00

The Combined Youth Camp 2007 Extra video clips =)

hope you enjoy em =)

Youth Alive 2007 - Trapped

2007-09-02T22:32:00.001+08:00

Hi guys, the pics for "youth alive 2007 - trapped" are in an album available at this link ...

Youth Alive 2007 - Trapped!

2007-08-19T17:32:00.000+08:00

yupz yupz ... mint slice choc cookies ... not very much mint cos a pack of 28 andes mint thins had to spread themselves over 96 cookies .... hahah ...

2007-08-19T10:59:00.000+08:00

This is the video shown during the combined youth camp reunion ... note* first 15secs cropped to fit on youtube ...

NDP 07 and more ...

2007-08-16T20:52:00.000+08:00

the upside of this month ... was mainly the NDP celebrations this year ... yeah! haha .. mainly cos i was there on the actual day itself and joined in .. and got a goodie bag ... hahah .. yeah =)

walking to the seating area ... security was pretty tight ... almost, or perhaps on par with airport security ...

the motivators in fish costumes energizing and encouraging the crowd to sing along, cheer, wave etc etc ...

the parade (proper) on the floating stage ....

the red lions coming down ... (yeah, the really really tiny red dots ..)

and finally the flag fly-pass ....

all taken with my 2mp keychain cam =) pretty nifty huh?

anyways let's move onto 'and more ...'

i've gotten a temp/unofficial replacement for my NS post ... hahah ... he's a condemned medic from stn 21 ... lolz ... personally, i'd rather not have him ... cos he's the slacker attitude/mentality kinda guy ... either way, i'm stuck with him ... at least he can do everything (almost) properly (almost too) ... still, one of the WOs wants me to handover the responsibilities to the official replacement (who will be coming in abt 3 weeks time ...) cos she doesn't trust my temp replacement .. :S ... oh wells ... anyways it's nice to have a replacement ... got more time to 'take a break' ... hahahaha =)

and more ...

i overlooked ... seriously overlooked a very serious matter, which caused a serious problem, but thankfully, it was resolved by a very serious power =)

thats the short version, here's the long version ...

i got a letter of temp acceptance for a position from MOE/NIE ... and the briefing i was to attend if i wanted to accept it, was on the 10th aug. and i only noticed it on the 14th aug ...and the letter was only valid till the 10th aug ...

fortunately, after much prayer, and an email and a call, and more prayer, they replied and offered me another briefing date and clarified some issues, like when i would start working (02 jan 08) instead of the stated 10 sep 07, cos i would still be in NS ... yeah ... so after i managed to mess up so much ... God was still gracious and helped set things right ... THANK YOU GOD!!! =)

and more ... (to joycelyn)

sry abt not being able to take leave and join u guys ice-skating ... but i guess that's life ... not everything works out the way we want them to ...

and more ...

but that's not for public knowledge ... =P so i guess it ends here ..

oh, btw .. joycelyn, u still owe me a few letters ...

2007-07-29T00:43:00.000+08:00

OK, i know i promised an update sometime ago.... anyways here it is ... somewhat late =/ still, better late than never =)

this pic was when i was still at my prev. house ... yeah, thats mandy on the left and barbara on the right, who came over to try their hand at baking merengue .. yups, thats the giant merengue we baked for pot-luck lunch on sat ...

Barbara, Andrew and myself of course ... in the church library ... just happened to have my cam with me .. so decided to take a pic =)

Barbara, myself, Shaun and Joel ... also in the library ... kinda like our lunch/after lunch chill-out place in church ... when nothing else is demanding our attention ... =)

we actually went to west coast park today .. it rained while we were there tho ... still, had a short song service then free & easy ... climbed up the pyramid as usual ... then chilled out while watching the bags ... then drove this ... 'leg-powered' go-cart around ... haha ... it was pretty fun ... just that the max speed is a little low ... still, was awesome ... wish i had a camera with me ... =/

anyways there's gonna be another wedding tomorrow ... and turns out, i probably won't be shooting .. but ushering .. and i'm not happy ... mainly cos i expected to be shooting and made all the necessary preps ... only to find out just a few hours ago that i won't be shooting but ushering ... i guess it's also cos they don't treat me like someone who can take photos .. argh ... i dunno ... maybe it's just my over-inflated ego ... that is, if it is over-inflated ... haix ...

my dad just came out and announced "i think u're addicted to games" .... -.-" ... like ... PLEASE!!!!!!!!! ..... argh ... i'm annoyed enough now without you breathing down my back and treating me like a small kid ... will someone PLEASE ... PLEASe treat me with SOME semblance of respect????

update!!!! =)

2007-07-18T21:30:00.000+08:00

lets see .. last sunday was .. so uber hectic .. covered a wedding as a back-up photog ..

i guess this summurises the wedding? hahahhaaa..

2007-07-18T08:31:00.001+08:00

http://www.mediafire.com/?2j3jxfjxivj

kaylin, mivio, uli, joel, brian, mandy, barbara, cara ... just click the above link to d/l the pics i took for u guys at gary & qin's wedding ...

2007-07-13T21:41:00.000+08:00

wow ... it's already been 2 weeks since i last updated ...

anyways life has been busy .. and tough on me ... all of a sudden ... just when oRD is looking around the corner ... Haix ..

to cut to the chase, SDQ (service quality department) dumped a shit-load of work on me on the 1st week of this month ... i guess thats why pretty much everyone didn't hear much from me that week ..

they called one morning and asked for 2006 jan till 2007 jun's EAS feedback statistics and graphs representing them ... and called at like .. 10am and asked for it before lunch .. :S ... had to rush it ... haix ..

also called and asked for all the records (hard copy) of the public feedback ... (nutcases...)

and worst of all, they wanted a softcopy list of all the compliments recieved by the EAS crew for 1 working year ... #$%^&* .... yeah .. and i had 1 week to do it ... minus monday and thursday (cos i go out for despatch) and i was on halfday leave on tue and wed .... and the extra work they piled on me .. :S .. i had effectively ... 3 days? .. cos i started working on it at 7.20am every morn when i reach HQ ...

yeah ... that on top of the monthly report i hve to churn out ... :S ... yeah ..

anyways this week was alot more relaxed ... at least in office ... cos i had to work on the youth camp video .... yeah ... still working on it .. but more or less the skeliton is there ... just gotta add the fats, muscles, tendons and brains ... hahhaha ... yeah ..

oh yeah, i went to CDA today .. for establishment training (AKA reservist training) =P ... however, it was utterly BORING!!!!!!! IMO, a waste of time are resource ... seriously ... anyways ORD is just around the corner .. =) just waiting for my replacement ..

ZZZzzzzzzzzzzzz

2007-06-27T23:10:00.000+08:00

Youth camp, Night cycling... moving house .. and more ...

night cycling photos

i won't go in chronological order .. cos i can't remember much ..

in fact, even more summarised cos this got delayed ...

ok .. lemme try again, we had the youth camp 15,16,17 Jun.

my group was named pharos (supposed to mean lighthouse in egyptian) although we kinda toyed with the idea of calling ourselves 'the floaters' ... cos the camp site had an obnoxious lack of toilets ... hahaha ... everyone agreed it was good, but not approperiate .. lolz ..

overall, the games (ice-breakers & station games) weren't fantastic or really high energy, but it was really fun =) cos of the people i guess =)

the other groups were 'moo moo land', 'just donuts', 'sheep dog', 'lost sheep', 'captain cactus', 'gravity hooks' and 'F8' ..

on the 2nd day, we had to put up a short skit/act .. and my groups spoofed the 'parable of the talents' and swapped the talents for maggie mee ... hahaha

for the 2nd day night act, we made spoof advertisements for each of the groups ... hahah .. won't elaborate more here ..

as for night cycling, it was on the 24th june... went from east coast park, up the whatever service rd .. the one next to changi airport ... upp to changi village for supper, then down loyang and simei to sempang bedok for a break .. and back to east coast .. .. after that, went home .. slept 2hours ..and went to a lunch with my relatives to announce my brother's engagement ... then my grandma's place .. then to an unexpected move ... FF: rise of the silver surfer .. kinda dumb movie .. :S

anyways today we just had the combines church sports day ... at thomson church ... tug of war, fitness challenge, basketball shootout, soccer precision shooting shootout, captain's ball ... then went for lunch with the gang and went to play dota ... :S .. 4 games, only won 1 round .. but i realised the sentinels won every round .. :S .. weird huh? ... super tired now ... getting abit hungry too ..

also, if anyone reads this ... pls pray for my bro or myself or my mum or dad to find this box ... with all our camer battery chargers inside ... my bro's kinda down now .... cos it's missing .. :S with all this moving house .. the worst case would be misplaced by the movers .. i.e. gone forever .. but i doubt thats the case ... so yeah. .. pls pray for us ... thanks =)

tatabb..

i really really need a blue blue sky holiday ... perhaps at a beach with someone i love ... hahaha ... though i don't have a gf .. and probably won't get one anytime soon .. =/

2007-06-13T22:31:00.000+08:00

2007-06-10T23:15:00.000+08:00

ok ok ... about time i updated ... anyways i'm currently living in Jurong .. (yep, u don't have to check your eyes .. i'm living in Jurong now, i'll be here for about a month .. then i'll be moving to Yishun ..

i'll be staying in Jurong (specifically the apartment on the 3rd floor of Jurong English SDA church) for about a month cos our place in yishun isn't ready yet .. yeah ..

anyways the stay here (2 days so far) has been ... rather .. interesting.. .hahah that is to say the least ..

went out for dinner with the church youths (who hang out at church, doing stuff, catching up, playing instruments, etc etc ..) they then hit the arcade .. haha ... 8 people playing daytona ... haha .. pretty cool ...

that was yesterday tho, today? ... spent the morning and afternoon packing up at our old house ... boxing stuff... so much stuff ... :S

then ... about an hour ago or so ... we had a bit of a problem ... the kitchen door of the apartment we're currently at ... just jammed itself .. :S .. no lock on the knob... the bit that juts out just wouldn't listen to the knob .. :S

i considered using this 3-story high ladder to get in the kitchen balcony but dad said it was dangerous ... :S .. so we ended up prising the fixed glass ventilation windows off and climbing in over the door ... (which i did) then used the wire from a stripped hanger to slip the door open ...

and moments later, the whole mechanism jams up ... can't even push that bit in .. :S ... ekk ... quite fortunate that it still worked enough to be slipped open .. *phew*

btw, joycelyn, that's why i couldn't pick up the call ... :S

*wonders ... should i ask someone out for a date? hahaha ...

moving house blues ...~

2007-06-03T14:14:00.000+08:00

well, the title sums it up ... really ... gonna move from yck to yishun ... but first to jurong .. cos the yishun flat won't be ready in time ... so we'll spend about a month or so in jurong ... haiz ... kinda ... weird ...

dad's in a packing frenzy .. (of some sort) at the moment .. :S ...

2007-05-25T18:50:00.000+08:00

Toby Mac - Made To Love
From the album Portable Sounds

The dream is fading now I am staring at the door
I know it’s over cause my feet have hit the cold floor
Check my reflection, I ain’t feeling what I see
It’s no mystery

What ever happened to a passion I could live for?
What became of the flame that made me feel more?
And when did I forget…

Chours:
That I was made to love You
I was made to find You
I was made just for You
Made to adore You
I was made to love and be loved by You
You were here before me
You were waiting on me
And You said You’d keep me never would You leave me
I was made to love
And be loved by You

The dreams alive with my eyes open wide
Back in the ring You got me swingin’ for the grand prize
I feel the haters spittin’ vapors on my dreams
But I still believe…

I’m reachin’ out, reachin’ up, reachin’ over
I feel a breeze cover me called Jehovah
And Daddy I’m on my way…

Chorus:

Anything I would give up for You
Everything I give it all away

Lyrics may not be reproduced without permission from the publisher.

2007-05-23T20:27:00.000+08:00

ok, it's about time i updated anyways ... well, for more than one reason ..

anyways my eldest brother is back in town =) .. probably for good now .. haha ... and he's a pastor =P ... pretty cool huh? ... anyways he's engaged and will probably be getting married near the end of this year ... (he says he wants to get married on the last day of the year .. hahaha)

anyways 2 of the youth cell grps (mine included) will be going to east coast park this sunday =P .. cycling + blading + frisbee + potluck/BYO lunch + r/c airplanes + volleyball[?] + err ... whatever beach/park games u can think off ... yeah ..

*hope u can join us joycelyn ... well, even though your O lvls MT is the day after ... it's alright if u can't join us .. i guess ...*

anyways i'm a little down and out now .. =( ... got 2 letters in the mail yesterday (yes joycelyn, i know i still owe u a letter) ... one was from NS, just telling me that i'll be getting an extra $100 cos of the gst hike ...

the other wasn't so pleasent .. it was from NTU, saying that i wasn't accepted .. =( ... well, not i don't know what i'm going to be doing with my life ... in a sense ... no goals, no ambitions ... err ... no places in any uni .. =( .. bleurgh ...kinda ... depressing, i guess ..

argh .. gotta snap out of that thinking ..

also gotta pass my ippt ... argh ... the bane of all NSF/NSmen ...

on the bright side, i guess i could say my walk with God has been improving ... statistically and beyond .. hahaha ... for one my QT has become more consistent and regular ... (daily) =)

oh, upgraded my laptop ram too ... just upgraded it from 512 to 768 .. haha ... yeah .. i guess that's about it ... =/

i really really need a blue sky holiday ... seriously....

ok, this post will be more or less, pics only .. hahaha ..

2007-05-14T20:56:00.000+08:00

new post .. yay ... hahha ...

2007-05-14T19:46:00.000+08:00

well, my blogger interface is STILL screwed up .. but who cares? .. i can still post, well at least i think i still can, i'll find out at the end of this post anyways ...

anyways i just got back a few hours ago from thailand ... spent fri, sat, sun and abit of this morning in thailand ..yupz yupz ... the land of a thousand smiles vs the land of 3 million smiles, still got 1 million reserve.... hahaha ..

anyways here's a summary of what happened ...

Thursday

Had a medical appointment in the morning .. at 8.40am :S .. at ttsh .. so i headed stright there from home ... it was for my headaches, ok, now it's confirmed as migraine ... yeah =( anyways i've more or less found an antidote to it, Jason Winter's Tea(or the tea tablets) + laughing, well a combination of both has never (yet) failed to ease the headaches ..

the doc sent me for a ct scan of my brain ... just to make sure it isn't a concussion/haemmorage/tumor etc etc ... ahhaha ..

anyways headed back to HQ for .. lunch? .. well, was there from around 1130 to 1350 ... then i was off to another medical appointment .. this time at AH ... for my shoulder ... the good news is it's getting better, the bad, is if it doesn't get better it'll be a mri + surgery .. =( i dun want that ... even if it's free ... :S

anyways headed home after that .. and packed up ... brought a huge luggage bag .. which was less than half full ... only to bring it home today ... well, almost too full to close ... well? what can i say? .. my brother's graduated and he's gotta move his accumulated stuff back home .. lolz ..

~ dark chocolate is my friend =)

Friday

set my alarm for 4.30am .. but i was up at around 4.15 ... bio clock somehow wakes me up earlier than necessary ... =/ oh wells, better early than late ..

mom tried calling a cab at around 4.45 or so .. couldn't get one ... so i tried, just called one of the many taxi company numbers i have ... turned out to be silver cab ... nearest taxi was 15mins away .. oh wells, shouldn't be a problem .. but mom was fretting over it .. =/ flight was supposed to leave around 7.30 .. iirc, meaning check-in by 6.30 or so ...

eventually i got a call from the taxi driver .. turned out he got lost after refusing directions .. :X .. .wells... gave him very clear and detailed instructions ... 5 mins later ... another call .. he was still lost, well at least somewhere in the estate ... so i went for a morning run .. :S .. running around the estate looking for him .. found him down a land that'd lead to a dead end .. :S .. *sigh* ... oh wells, managed to meet up with ben (my 2nd bro) - (the doctor to be) in time ... ... still before 6am .. i think .. anyways there wasn't much of a queue in at the check-in counter ... so i suppose we were darn early .. :S .. lolz ..

walked around for abit then went into the departure area ... and walked all the way to the boarding gate ... yeah ... bummed around for a bit while waiting for the plane to arrive and the gate to open ...

the flight was pretty smooth i guess, jetstarasia .. pretty decent for budget airlines .. =) watched spiderman 3 on my psp during the flight =) ... it's a nice movie ... only hobgoblin dies ... :S .. dang .. he isn't supposed to die so early .. is he? .. =( also i'm pretty sure vemon isn't gone ... haiz ...

anyways nat (my eldest brother) and doca (his girlfriend) - (they're engaged! now only waiting for wedding bells .. hahaha) - (the graduate) picked us up at the airport ... in a truck, well, they call it a truck, it's more like an older MPV or SUV .. 7 seater, with a frame on the top for additional luggage ... yeah, my huge 'rhino' luggage had to go on the top ... dropped by some shopping centre on the way to his campus for late breakfast ... intended to wait for the main mall to open, but it didn't open by 11.30 .. so we went on our way .. can't remember where we ate lunch on fri ...but i know we went for early dinner with my family + doca and her mum yeah so it was 7 of us .. at some restaurant near the campus .. pretty good food at pretty good prices .. yeah

had friday vesper that night ... which was the start of the graduation (3 day long graduation!!! :S)

ben and i bunked with nat .. yeah, my parents stayed at the mission health promotion centre (which is less than 5 mins away from campus .. )

~ mint patties are ALSO my friends =)

Saturday

had breakfast at the college caffeteria yeah, their food standard has improved =)

hmmmz ... morning sabbath school at 9am .. (thats 10am singapore time .. so it felt kinda late) ...

then had devine service (aka church service) ... lunch-ed at the caffeteria again then nat drove us off to the nearby nature park .. since it was a rainy day .. and was still drizzling a little bit .. well, i guess there weren't too many animals out and about ... saw a hornbill, a few deer and too many monkeys .. hahaha ... well, wish we saw the elephants & tigers & rhinos & the many other birds .. =/ anyways we then treked about 1km+ down a trail to a waterfall ... it was darn majestic ... not the biggest or most majestic ... but still ... ~blown away ..

went out for dinner (my family+doca) at dairy home(farm? house?) .. dang i can't remember ... anyways that place has the best yoghurt ... and yoghurt icecream =) yeah man ... really smooth and creamy .. their food was pretty good too =) got to keep the cute icecream cups too .. hahaha ..

~ of course yoghurt icecream and their cute icecream cups are my friends too =P

Sunday

breakfast at the caffeteria again, their rice is still hard to eat ... though everything else is fine .. hahaha ... (minus the veggies, which are still extremely salty)

the morning part of the graduation service was a bummer ... cos we needed tix to get in .. :S luckily we're family friends of one of the lecturers there .. who let us in even though we didn't have enough tix ... :S lolz .. anyways it was long and draggy again .. but they had a really nice part where the students took the flowers pinned on their gowns and pinned em on their parents ... *awww

anyways the final (or perhaps actual?) graduation was in the afternoon .. the one where the princess of thailand came down to present the graduants with their certs .. and that one really needs tix to get in .. .and is uber-secure ... cos it's the pricess ... so royal guards were aroudn etc etc ... so only my parents went in to watch ... no photography or anything else allowed ... only a watch and eye-glasses allowed in .. no keys, no pen, no camera or anything else .. :S

so while my parents went to watch it, ben and i stayed behind in his dorm room, took turns on the com and slept ... while waiting for it to be over ... (finally)

after-which we (my family+doca+her mom) went off to this waterfall restaurant (which was by a waterfall .. albeit a small one ..) where we popped champaign (minus the alcohol) which ben brought all the way from australia ... and i got a grand total of 13 mosquitoe bites in a matter of minutes .. :S the food was pretty good, if u overlook the fact that it was outdoors and light attracts bugs ... and well, near a waterfall and foliage .. there are loads of bugs .. :S

later while we were packing, we popped the muscat (i think) sparkling grape juice ... ahh .. better than champaigne .. .hahaha .. packed and packed and packed .. yeah ..packed some stuff into the car as well ...

~ 100% pure grape juice from australia is ALSO my friend =P

Sunday (today)

set my alarm for 4.45am ... woke up around 4.30am .. then turned off my alarm and went back to sleep .. lolz .. woke up at 5am, more or less everyone 100% alert .. haha ... packed the (remaining) luggage into the car and went to pack my parents from their room .. and off to the airport ...

checked in and then ate at the airport ... .. almost missed the flight cos mom was window shopping inside the departure area .. lolz ... we were almost the last (if not the last) to board the plane even though we checked in pretty early .. haha ..

had some terbulance ,... nothing major though ... slept most of the flight away ... while my bro watched spiderman 3 on my psp .. haha ..

lunched at the airport canteen then sent ben off at the budget terminal and caught a cab home ... yeah .. that's about it .. i guess ...

=)

finally an update ...

2007-05-09T22:03:00.000+08:00

ok .. apologies to anyone who checked my blog to see if i updated ... cos i didn't update for very very very long ..

anyways, i sold the laptop that i used to post my previous blog entry (at a profit) and bought another one ... =) and recently got a friend of mine a cheap and decent laptop for his home/personal use too ...

ok a few updates ...

i'll be moving from yio chu kang to yishun soon ...

my eldest brother is graduating this weekend (so i won't be in sg this weekend)

i went to donate blood on the 22nd apr (with a bunch of friends, and cracked jokes while/before donating .. including 'u watch ah .. after she inject the painkiller then she'll poke the "yakult" straw into your vein and then u can watch your life flow of ...' LoLz ...

went to a friend's house (in jurong) 2x this month to lan-game =P .. so fun ... 3v3 starcraft: broodwars (so retro huh?), 4v4 cs 1.01, 4v4 cs (err .. latest version), 4v4 dota .. hahaha ... i luv the Phantom Assassin ... but i luv those strength heroes who can tank as well .. so easy to level up ..

got 2 medical appointments tomorrow (both arranged by the hospitals .. :S) one in the morn (at ttsh) and one in the afternoon (at AH) ... -.-"

i'm currently using my home desktop to blog ... lalalala ...

super tempted to buy a 02 xda II .. but well, thats the advantage of not having any $$ on hand (or rather not being willing to spend the $$) i don't waste it .. although i've wasted a lot on my psp .. :S egad ...

started playing gunbound and shattered galaxy again cos i was so darn bored .. but kinda stopped liao ...

will be going cycling at east coast park on the 27th may 2007 with my cell grp and another cell grp ... yeah and joycelyn has agreed to come along =) yayz ..

i'm kinda becoming an anime fan .. :S .. lolz .. most enjoyed anime series so far ... - The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, Ghost Hunt, Zipang, Noein ...

currently downloading Starship Troopers: Chronicles (the animation series) ...

also looking for the original novel, cos the book rox more ...

wish to start learning driving ... but no $$ T.T ...

got 6 more mths till i ord .. unless i fail to pass my ippt .. T.T

shoulder still giving me some pain when i run ... :S .. and my stamina sux now too .. :S

decided i must pump my arms more when i gym .. cos they said my veins on my left arm were too hard to find to donate blood .. T.T ...

err ... i think i've kinda run out of trivia to update .. :S so i guess that's it .. =)

Hello World (for my new old laptop)

2007-03-13T23:24:00.000+08:00

heh heh .... well, as the title says, this post is Hello World, for my new (old) laptop ...

if you still don't understand, i bought myself a 2nd hand laptop =) for the price and specs, i'd say it's well worth the money, only had to spend an additional $30 on a usb2.0 pcmcia card ... =)

fyi, it's a fujitsu c2010, p4 1.6ghz =)

2007-02-25T01:11:00.000+08:00

alright ... lets see .. let me review my goals and if i accomplished them ..

1) plan my cell lesson for this fri

planned, but didn't need, cos my cell and another cell met at my house for new year dinner + cell ... so they took over .. hahaha ... anyways it was really fun (that was err ... day before yesterday (or fri, evening) ...

2) experiment in the kitchen for B/S day

well, didn't do everything i wanted to try .. but at least i got somewhere =)

3) go shopping for new music, so far i have my eye on "declaration" by Steven curtis chapman and "painting the invisible" by Vicky Beeching .... got others, but forgot to take the album names down .. -.-"

yep, went down to trumpet praise with my bro on wednesday, bought "Add to the Beauty" by Sara Groves and "Wide-Eyed and Mystified" by Downhere =) both albums rox!!!

4) complete my 10 chapters a week...

yep, completed =)

5) revise my Additional Mathematics, starting with differentiation and integration ...

ok, i'm lacking here ... cos got so many other things to do!!! .. like compress videos from 3.6gb (raw avi, to 100mb avi... no noticible difference leh!!)

6) apply for NIE (degree in education) should it open within this week

didn't open this week ... =(

7) go out.

definately did .. though all my prior plans were cancelled .. =( =(

8) take photos

did this too =)

9) sleep more

failed here ... i mean .. who sleeps more during their holidays? .. :S

10) get well.

nope, actually, i think i got more sick .. :S

2007-02-19T20:05:00.000+08:00

ok .. since i know if i don't set some goals to accomplish, i'll get nothing done ... i might as well list them here ...

1) plan my cell lesson for this fri

2) experiemnt in the kitchen for B/S day ..

3) go shopping for new music, so far i have my eye on "declaration" by Steven curtis chapman and "painting the invisible" by Vicky Beeching .... got others, but forgot to take the album names down .. -.-"

4) complete my 10 chapters a week...

5) revise my Additional Mathematics, starting with differentiation and integration ...

6) apply for NIE (degree in education) should it open within this week

7) go out.

8) take photos

9) sleep more

10) get well.

i guess that's about it ...

2007-02-19T19:19:00.000+08:00

*sighs* ... i SHOULD be happy ... but well .. somehow everything just sux ... =(

lets see ... since this weekend is the CNY weekend ... mon and tue are both public holidays, so i decided, since i had 3 days of leave that i HAD to use before march 07 ... might as well take it now right? .. so i get 9 days in total .. weekends included...

as a result i had to rush my work this month ... clearing as much as possible in the first 2 weeks ... and hopefully the others won't forget to collect and open my mail ... and hopefully they won't officially 'receive' too many for me to key in .. :S

anyways CNY eve, sat night, had reunion dinner at my ah mah's house ... pretty standard ... then sun morn, went to my ah mah's house again ... then went to ikea to buy stools... cos we were gonna have friends over the day after (which is today) ... nothing fantastic either ..

today, monday, spent most of the morning preparing food for lunch when we had friends over ... but the problem is, they're mostly adults or very young kids .. =( .. *sigh* ... so the teens/youth were .. only ben(my brother), zhi hua(my cousin) and myself ... -.-" ...

oh yeah, kinda fell sick on sunday .. probably ate too many cashews ... but i like cashews so much ... =/ still a little sick .. but getting better ..

and tomorrow ... tuesday, got dinner at my aunt's home ... originally planned to go to pitstop cafe with joyce, shaun, victor and joycelyn ... but turns out it'll be pretty hard cos i got dinner after that =( and oh dang, kinda fortunate in a sense ... cos i just checked their operating hours ... it's from 5pm - 11pm on weekdays, 12pm-9pm on sun and 12pm-1am on PH ... *sigh* ... tomorrow's gonna suck big time .. =( ...

won't have much to do on wed, thurs, fri either ...*ARGH$^&*()* ... hmmm ... i guess it'll be good in a sense ... gives me more time to plan my cell lesson ...

oh yeah, got a ex-class cny gathering .. next sat night .. hopefully i'll be free .. and still got brother/sister day next month ... *aahhh ... ok ..* at most i'll spend the next 3 days experimenting in the kitchen ... *haiz* ...

and ... please don't raise hopes then say things like 'anyways i don't think it'll work out, but do u still wanna give it a shot?' [NOT BGR related] it friggin irritates me ...

2007-01-26T11:20:00.000+08:00

anyways, if anyone wondered what was with the prev, update (not the one with the youtube vid, the one before that) .. it was cos i was having a tough time in my NS dept ... *haiz* .. but i guess it's ok now ... and after the dept, it's the provost ... idiotic guy ... should have gone to his seniors stright ...

anyways, that aside, since i have to use 5 days of leave before march or they get 'burnt' ... i took leave on thurday(yesterday) and today(friday) =) ... so far, my moods have been ALOT better =) yays!

lets see ... yesterday, i ran some errands in the morn ... some banking stuff and mailing ... hopefully my iBanking gets fixed ... went out with joycelyn in the afternoon ... not exactly out, but went over to her place and had lunch, hung out, played dumb games and just wasted time together ... so fun .. =) .. yeah, somehow i just feel happy(?) & comfortable around her .. (but she has a BF liao, and she loves him ALOT, and is happy with him right? ... joyce .. u don't disagree right? .. hahah)

went out with my cell group after that, we went to pitstop cafe =) . yepz it's a cool gaming cafe and even has it's own blog! - http://pitstoppers.blogspot.com/

and since we spent enough (as a group) i managed to get membership there! alright! i know where i wanna go to celebrate my ORD liao .. (even though my ORD date is a LONG time more ...)

on the downside, i may not get CPL rank this feb .. due to some weird directive which came out without anyone knowing ... hopefully i'll be able to get the rank .. otherwise .. =( ...

on the upside, i think i wanna try teaching as my first career ... yeahz! ... anyone want english/math/physics tuition (up to sec sch only ..=/) can ask me! =)

oh yeahz! JOYCELYN, u still owe me a photo! ...

WE LIVE IN SINGAPURA the MTV version

2007-01-26T09:07:00.001+08:00

Really funny clip, it's an animated version of the MTV song "We live in Singapura" by NCHProductions

unhinged

2007-01-18T22:57:00.000+08:00

well, my typical dispatch day was a little ... inverted ... it felt really .. weird, going the reverse order ... closer to mirror image than inverted ...

anyways i started from central and ended at changi instead of vice-versa ... so it was really strange travelling the same roads (more or less) but going the other direction ...

anyways while i was on dispatch today, my mind somehow drifted ... and i started wondering about when i lost my edge ... in a sense ... when i lost my urge to be the best or at least keep improving ...

i was reminded recently of how much i stressed myself when i was in pri. sch ... how i wouldn't be satisfied if i got only 95/100 even if i topped the class ... but well, i realise now, that when i reached P6 ... i'd already settled for top 5 in class ... i guess the sudden addition of a few scholars to the class dampened my fighting spirit ...

later in sec sch, even though i should have been one of the top students in my sec 1 class, i somehow failed to shine ... and thinking back, i guess it was cos i was never really liked ... in fact, i think i misunderstood others alot ...

then later ... in the prefectorial board (which i once loved ...) i guess my self-worth ... self-esteem or perhaps ego, took another bashing, when i screwed up the parade commands infront of the school ... not once, not twice, but three times ... and after that was never allowed to redeem myself ... or perhaps the daily name-calling and ego-bashing never allowed me to want to risk redeeming myself ... and afterwhich never being promoted .. or recognised ...

JC wasn't much better ... though i do remember being driven during the 1st 3mths ... but not-so afterward ... why? .. i'm not sure .. but i remember a secondary sch classmate (who went to ACJC for the 1st 3mths and ended up in YJC after the results) saying she'd rather go overseas than study in this 'dump of a JC' (refering to YJC, as compared to ACJC) ... and well .. 'nuff said ..

NS isn't much better ... well, i'd say recruit life was a tad more pleasent ... even with the unpleasent NCOs .. and some dumb people in the company who end up 'sabo'-ing everyone else ... at least there aren't people who work in the same department as you, sit just across you and go for tea/lunch breaks with you who try to screw around with you ...

i'm pissed ... and probably just about unhinged ...

happy new year to all ..

2007-01-01T13:17:00.000+08:00

oh wells, it's a new year .. once again .. *sigh* ... anyways let me go over some of the stuff that happened recently ...

1) carolling

1.5) baptism (1.5 cos i forgot to add it earlier and lazy to change the numbers ... =X)

2) christmas prog

3) christmas parties

4) haagen

5) vistaquest mini digi cams

6) JC class gathering

okies, there we go ...

1) went carolling on the 23rd ... was pretty fun .. yeah, but by the time we got home it was 3am on the 24th .. lolz .. went to ... 5? or 6 homes? ... anyways wayne has his own FLOOR!! ... not room, but floor! ... gahh .. so much space .. lolz .. also ate and ate and ate ... *argh .. * getting fat ...

gotta get pics from ben .. i didn't take any ..

1.5) whee, and we have angels in church once again ... hahaha .. ok, in short we had another baptism, last one of 2006...

2) christmas prog was on the 24th night .. was taking photos .. the drama was superb ...

can u feel their pain? ... yeah. it was superb ...

3) christmas parties ... wow .. so many of them ... had a sleep over on the 16th-17th then 17th afternoon another party, den chiong down to bugis, den chiong to vivo to catch eragon with the same guys from the afternoon party .. lolz ... eragon wasn't as good as they said it was .. =(

den .. 22nd afternoon had 2 parties chashing .. -.- my cell grp party and med dept party .. (obviously i went for my cell party =P) no pics tho ... =(

4) haagen daz .. =P their ice rox ... 'nuff said ... too bad got no pix again =(

5) vistaquest mini digi cams =P whee~ i placed the order a few weeks ago and i just got them on sat ... wahahha ...

6) JC class gathering, finally, after a long long time, almost everyone from my JC class could meet for a class gathering ... ahh ... and i used this opportunity to test out my new toy (above) =P below are some pic samples ... 2 of my class bbq+gathering 2 random ones taken in broad daylight =)

2006-12-28T23:45:00.000+08:00

i'm so ... sianed .. lolz ..

mainly cos i formatted my psp mem stick intending to upgrade to the latest devhook firmware ... budden .. .my back up failed =( ... and the earthquake kinda killed highspeed internet here .. so downloading a replacement devhook installer is out of the question .. den i get DH from someone else ... and instead of copying the whole thing, file for file .. i decide i wanna fresh install it ... and well, i screw up .. =( ... plus the latest ultimate installer for DH doesn't work!! .. ergh ...

anyways .. on the UP side, i'll be visiting Nacli once again! .. yays! .. haha .. tho this time .. 4 years after the last time i was there, and now, with the church youth leadership grp, not the sch prefectorial board ... =)

anyways ... nothing much else to blog about .. .except my toy cams are on the way .. yays! .. .

just a little update ..

2006-12-14T22:10:00.000+08:00

okies, i had yesterday off ... so i went around doing everything that needed to be done, in some sense ...

anyways i went for a shoulder x-ray yesterday morn, at woodlands, cos my shoulder has been giving me problems for over a month now, and hasn't improved. and met louisa along the way cos she had some goodies that she brought back from taiwan that she wanted to give me =) whee~ thanks louisa!

anyways when i was on the train, an annoying, but yet now uncommon occurance occured (ok, that sounded weird) ... anyways an indian man started playing his phone ring-tones at extremely high volumes .. going through them all one after another and asking his friend (next to him) which sounded best ... it was kinda hillarious at first ... then the other indian man pulled out his own phone (which was the same model) and played his ring tones together with him ... =.="

yeah, thats them trying to decide which ring tone was nicer while people were shifting away or moving to the next carriage ... i could just imagine their convo ...

1: so err .. which tone do u think is nicer?
2: err .. why don't u listen to my tones? .. i think they're nice
1: but you've got the same phone ..
2: so? we can play the same tones at the same time and see whose is louder ...
1: you're ON!

1&2: *both play tones*

then, another 2 indians came into the same carriage and sat next to them

but well, they were dressed alot .. more nicely .. and were more considerate to the other passengers and at this point the ring-tone players stopped they're fun .. but it was kinda interesting to observe people on the train ... i could imagine the chinese lady's thoughts too ... like

"please don't associate me with them ... *looks away*"

hahah .. ok that's a bit mean ... =/

then i went and got my x-ray done ... which was surprisingly fast (although i've had x-rays done before ... it still felt really fast ... (no photos cos i didn't dare take out my mini .. lolz ...)

after which i boarded the train once again to go down to bugis ... where i was supposed to meet joycelyn at 11.30 for lunch (cos she owed me a lunch ...) but she sms-ed that she'd be late, but will be there by 12.00 ...

*tic* *tic* *tic* 12.20 ... still not here ..

then she called and was in a cab .. at pasir ris .. :S ... oh wells ... go jalan jalan walk around ... den around 12.40 .. when i was walking around, she called and asked where i was, i asked her back the same question and the person infront of me suddenly turned ... and well, that was her ... hahahs ... so weird .. .=/ oh wells ...

spent some time wandering around ... and later met 2 push-cart sales people .. haha ... one Shirley and one Derek ... hahah ... it was really interesting how we became friends ... hahaha ... cos they thought we were a couple and we thought they were a couple (well, not quite, but perhaps a possible couple LoLz ... and we started talking and poking fun at each other ... and we bought lunch for Shirley (but not derek cos he's saving $$ AND on diet) and ourselves and basically stood there and ate ... (dang, i wanted arrabiata at pasta mania or something else ... oh well, settled for mos burger ...)

bought a few gifts for gift-exchange too ... and joycelyn got her huge piggy .. when dazz(her b/f or *hun*, as she calls him) dropped by ..

later we went off for dinner, but i left early, cos my shoulder was killing me, and the ponstan, antacids and anorex had killed my appetite and made me feel tired and nauseous ... :S ..

anyways shirley's friend met us for dinner too .. (though i left w/o dinner) and well, it was akward, cos there were like 2 couples and myself .. :S felt like a lamp-post .. .:S ... although shirley says her friend and her are not a couple ... oh well, i'd take her word for it bah ...hahahs ..

i guess thats all .. for now ... today was quite boring lahh ... just the usual despatch .. around S'pore, passing a few schools on the way of course .. (including SACS and HKSS) ...

i guess thats enough for today .. tatabb.. =)

*insert snazzy blog name here*